


Nature of the Soul

by somerdaye



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, False Memories, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Character, gratuitous siken, ignores canon after blood of olympus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2019-10-05 20:06:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17331494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somerdaye/pseuds/somerdaye
Summary: What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Leo has been missing for ten years.





	1. PIPER I: helpless in sleep and struggling

**Author's Note:**

> hey all, this is my first attempt at posting something chaptered. i've got most of the story written, and buckle up - it's gonna be a long one. thanks as always to charlie, kylie, dan, and janira for being the best sounding boards and cheerleaders and betas and friends in the entire world.

Another meteor flashes across Piper’s vision. She blinks, the tail of it imprinted on her eyelids for a moment.

“I’ve been here before,” she says into the quiet Nevada night.

“Well, duh.”

Piper turns, both expecting the voice and surprised by it. Jason sits beside her on the roof, his appearance flickering as if her dream can’t decide which version of Jason to show - the Jason she never knew or the older Jason she knows like the back of her hand. With the desert in the background and his shape so nebulous, he looks like a mirage.

“This is sweet,” Piper says, watching the worry lines deepen and disappear around Jason’s eyes. Those, at least, are a constant, even if they’re behind flickering glasses. “Very sweet, but this never actually happened.”

Jason laughs. It both sounds like him and doesn’t; familiar and not at the same time.

“Didn’t it?” he asks, still smiling.

“No. It didn’t. Hera created this memory. You know that. You’re not even real.”

“Sure feels real, doesn’t it?” Jason hums, putting his hand over hers. It’s warm, and Piper can feel the pressure of it as if he’s really beside her, but she knows that doesn’t mean anything.

Another meteor above them. Piper smiles sadly.

“It would be nice if my subconscious gave me a real memory of us to dream about, if it had to pick a memory. We have ten years’ worth.”

“You’re demanding your dreams take root in reality?” Jason asks, fond.

Piper smiles again, feeling sheepish. “Okay, fair point. I might as well just enjoy myself, right?”

“That’s the spirit.”

With a squeeze, Jason lets go of her hand and reaches into his pocket. His jacket pocket, even though neither version of him had been wearing one before now. Piper is willing to let that slide, still a bit embarrassed about criticizing a dream of all things, but she’s thrown when Jason pulls out a lighter and places a cigarette between his lips.

“You don’t smoke,” she blurts, unable to help herself.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Who are you, my mom? _Metiche_.”

As he lights the cigarette, his form flickers again. Piper jolts awake, the image of a teenage Leo Valdez imprinted on her eyelids like a comet.

* * *

“Well, it’s definitely not the weirdest dream you’ve ever had.”

Piper stares into her mug, trying to remember if she’s already put sugar in her coffee or not. She’s been thrown off all morning. As soon as Jason joined her in the world of the conscious, she’d walked him through the dream.

“That’s true,” Piper agrees. “It just felt so real. Like, as real as the memory itself feels.”

Jason doesn’t remind her that the memory in question wasn’t real to begin with, nor does he tell her that it was only a dream. Instead, he says, “I miss him, too.”

The soft, understanding tone of his voice makes Piper feel like crying. She doesn’t look up from her coffee, doesn’t want to see the soft, understanding look on his face.

“Of course I do, but I don’t think I dreamt this because I miss him, Jay. You don’t understand, it’s like he was _there_.” Damn it. Her voice breaks. Jason’s hand is on hers before she can catch her breath.

“We’ll find him,” says Jason.

Not this again. For what feels like the millionth time, Piper shakes her head. “He isn’t missing, Jason, it’s been years. We’ve talked about this. He’s not coming back.”

“No, you’ve talked about it,” Jason corrects her. The softness has a familiar edge, now. “I don’t think he’s gone.”

“I know you think that Nico’s word is the be-all and end-all of this,” she says, “but he’s been wrong before, and - besides! If Leo is alive, where is he? He should be here. He should be home with us.”

With a deep sigh, Jason wraps his arms around Piper. She doesn’t cry, but she thinks that is probably from being cried out after so long. It has been a little under ten years since she watched her best friend explode. She held out hope for a while that he was out there somewhere, because it wouldn’t be the first time Leo survived something that should have killed him, but it became less and less likely as time passed. Piper has learned a lot about grief since the war, and yet Leo’s shroud still hangs in her home office. It is no longer clear if it remains there for Jason’s sake or her own. She can’t bring herself to burn one of the only physical reminders she has of Leo.

Piper closes her eyes and leans into Jason’s warm embrace. His arms are so sure after all their time side by side - she can’t help but remember the way Leo’s would shake when he hugged them, like he had never been hugged so tight before, like he was afraid they would be ripped away from him.

Huh. Maybe Piper does still have some tears left for Leo.

* * *

There are a lot of days that Jason is not so sure and optimistic. It used to terrify Piper, the first few times she saw those blue eyes look wild and empty when they should be full of warmth. Not much about Jason scares or surprises her anymore. She can tell that it’s one of those days when she wakes up and sees that Jason is already up, lying stock-still on his back and staring at the ceiling.

“Hey,” she says softly, reaching for his arm. “You awake in there?”

No response. He doesn’t even blink.

It’s a bad day, then. She’s pretty sure it won’t work - it never does when he’s like this - but she infuses her voice with enough charmspeak to make Aphrodite herself pause. “ _Get up_.”

Jason blinks. He still doesn’t show any sign of moving or speaking.

“Worth a try,” Piper murmurs to herself, the silence from her best friend making her feel heavy inside. She reaches for her cell to rearrange her dentist appointment and laughs when they tell her there’s a cancellation fee at such short notice. It wouldn’t matter if that was her last fifty dollars, she wouldn’t leave Jason alone like this.

It would be best if she could pick him up and put him in a shower to rouse him, but Piper has just never been that strong. Jason is six-foot-something and mostly muscle, although his stomach has gotten softer in the years since they met. Piper has always been more than a bit soft, but even at her most trim - fighting monsters, running for her life with heavy weapons, skipping meals on the road - she still wouldn’t have been able to lift Jason’s dead weight without help.

So instead, she gets out of bed. “I’m going to get us some breakfast, I’ll be back soon,” she says, unsure if her voice is reaching him at all.

Piper stops in the bathroom and washes her face, brushes her teeth, makes herself feel more human. It almost hurts to come back into Jason’s room and see him there, looking no more lively than a corpse. She takes a deep breath to center herself and heads downstairs.

The brownstone is eerie in the mornings and late at night, quiet in a way Piper was sure New York City would never be. She used to like the quiet, but that was before her imagination decided to conjure up a Leo to break it. It feels inconsiderate to blare music while Jason is in a state, even if he can’t really hear her, so she props her phone against the microwave and video calls her sister.

Drew answers while Piper is picking apart frozen fruit with a fork, and she manages to look flawless even though she clearly hasn’t slept.

“Do you have any idea what time it is in L.A.?” Drew asks as a greeting. Piper ignores it. If Drew had been sleeping, she wouldn’t have answered her phone.

“I wanted to ask what you’re wearing to the fundraiser this month.”

“Which one?”

Piper rolls her eyes. “The one you’re invited to.”

Drew rolls her eyes, too, as if to mock Piper doing it. “Newsflash, you invited me to both. I’ve already got my ticket to New York, you can’t change your mind on me now.”

The subtle push of charmspeak in Drew’s words makes Piper think that Drew had not, in fact, been invited to the Save the Whales fundraiser in Manhattan, but she doesn’t particularly care. These things are always more fun when she has someone to stick with.

“All right,” she says with a shrug. “Jason doesn’t want to come, anyway. So now you’re my plus one for both fundraisers, and I need you to tell me what to wear.”

“If your measurements have changed since April, send them again,” says Drew, “and I’ll get you the right outfits.”

“You’re the best.”

It’s a relief to pass off her public appearance to her much more suited sister. Drew always has the prettiest dresses made for Piper’s events, and Piper wishes she could appreciate them more. They just get donated as soon as everything is over, since Drew won’t allow her to get photographed in the same dress twice.

“I know,” Drew hums, but she seems distracted. “So, Jason. Where is he, anyway? Gonna walk by shirtless at some point?”

“He’s out for groceries,” Piper lies easily, turning the blender on so she doesn’t have to listen to Drew say anything more about Jason. When she pours the smoothies out and ends the noise, she acts like Drew hadn’t tried to speak during it. “But I’m glad I can count on you to care about what I look like.”

“You raise more money when you look good,” Drew insists, helpfully dropping the topic.

“I believe you,” Piper laughs, “and that’s why I’m thrilled, because it means that I don’t have to be the one to care.”

“Well, I am the best stylist on the west coast.”

Piper has no idea if that’s true or not, but she and Drew have an understanding and respect that she isn’t sure she’ll ever find in another stylist.

“You are,” she agrees simply. “Now get some sleep, I’m going to do some yoga.”

“No, you’re going to stress over the guest list again,” Drew says, and if Piper didn’t know better she’d call it fond. “Alright, I’ll see you in two weeks for the whales, and again in three weeks for abolishing animal cruelty in the beauty industry. Have you booked your ticket to L.A. for that yet?”

“Yes,” Piper lies.

“Hurry up and do that.”

Before Piper can keep arguing, just to keep a dialogue going while her home is so silent, Drew hangs up.

Sometimes Piper’s siblings are annoying, but she’s still grateful that they’re all around when she needs advice. She’d called Mitchell in tears when she and Jason broke up the first time, and he’d taken a cab from Queens to Camp Half-Blood to comfort her. Sure, she’d had to pay for the cab, but it was the thought that counted. She’s been able to rely on her siblings in a way she never expected over the course of her adult life.

As much as Thalia tries, she’s immortal and has bigger responsibilities than making sure Jason gets out of bed. It’s not like Jason talks to her about his bad days when they do spend time together. Whenever Jason falls apart or shuts down or goes into overdrive with research, Piper is the one to metaphorically pick him back up and set him back on track.

She brings their smoothies up to Jason’s room, unsurprised that he has not appeared to have moved a muscle.

“Hey, Grace,” she says gently, setting the cups on his nightstand to better help him into a sitting position. It takes a lot out of her to even get him this far. She helps him lean back against the headboard, puts his glasses on his nose for him, and presses the smoothie into his hand to physically coax him into drinking it. The whole thing is uncomfortably similar to the times she’s volunteered in hospitals and nursing homes on the front lines of her charities, but this isn’t her first rodeo. She’s seen every possible side of Jason.

As she guides Jason’s hand, helping him drink his breakfast, Piper wonders if these episodes are ever going to stop on their own. Jason doesn’t talk about his feelings - not to Piper, not to Thalia, not to a professional - and not for the first time, Piper gets a little scared that this is going to be the monster that kills him.

* * *

After a couple days of slowly pulling Jason out of his near catatonic state, it’s almost a relief for Piper to be on the roof with him again. There’s no meteor shower this time, and Jason keeps fidgeting with things in his jacket pockets as he looks up at the stars.

“Here we are again,” she says. Jason smiles without looking away from the sky. He starts tapping rhythmically on his leg, the pattern purposeful. “You’re not Jason, are you?”

“Do I look like Jason, Beauty Queen?” he asks, and suddenly he doesn’t anymore.

It’s just as hard to look at Leo, young and thrumming with energy, but Piper is determined not to be startled awake this time. She wants to be with him for as long as possible. She shifts closer, until their shoulders are brushing. Gods, but it really does feel like he’s here. He’s warm even through both of their jackets, and she can smell smoke on him.

“I miss you,” Piper says softly.

Leo laughs, but there’s no real humour in it. “Not glad to be rid of me?”

“No,” says Piper. She doesn’t even entertain the idea of it as a joke. She takes Leo’s hand in hers and squeezes tight. It’s like touching a furnace with her bare hand, but it doesn’t hurt. “No, you should be here. It hurts every day that you aren’t.”

“I’m here now,” Leo points out, finally meeting Piper’s eyes. The intensity in his face drives her argument out the window.

“Yeah. I guess you are.”

Leo smiles, and it takes Piper’s breath away momentarily. He looks around them instead of making a big deal about the tears that have sprung to her eyes. “Why are we up here, anyway?”

“This is where I remember coming with Jason to be alone,” says Piper. She can’t pull her gaze away from the sharp angles of Leo’s face. “Of course, that never actually happened, but I guess my subconscious likes it up here. You never came up with us, did you?”

“Nope,” Leo says absently. “Wonder why it looks so real.”

This is Piper’s dream, and _she_ has been on the roof of the Wilderness School a couple dozen times, with or without Jason, so of course it looks and feels like what she remembers it to look and feel like. Regardless, there’s no point in arguing with a figment of her imagination, so she just shrugs in reply.

Leo looks back up at the stars and squeezes Piper’s hand. They sit in silence for longer than the real Leo ever could have done. When Piper wakes up from this one, she feels at peace.

* * *

Piper is only halfway ready when the doorbell rings. She makes to stand up, but Drew gives her a vicious glare and she decides it would be best not to piss her sister off while she’s holding a hot iron.

“Jason will get it,” Piper says, like that’s the only reason she’s staying seated.

“Yes, he will,” says Drew. There’s an edge to her voice that makes Piper even more nervous. She returns to curling Piper’s thick hair while Piper does her own nails.

Drew showed up an hour before, already gorgeous for the fundraiser, and basically manhandled Piper into her office chair to make her over. Jason has very wisely stayed out of their way, taking his laptop down to the first floor and staying there. Gods, Piper wishes that was her. She knows it’s best for her to look nice, but the process of looking nice is so annoying.

The sound of cheerful voices floats up the stairs. Piper can’t exactly make out what they’re saying from two floors up, even with the office door open.

“I think Percy’s here,” she hums, blowing on her left hand’s nails to speed up the drying process.

“He’s early.”

“Jason’s watching the kids so that Percy and Annabeth can come with us,” Piper says, careful. She isn’t sure if she should correct Drew, since she doesn’t really know if it’s her place to tell people Percy’s pronouns. Maybe it’s shittier not to say something?

Failing to notice Piper’s internal dilemma, Drew sighs. “Jason would make a great dad.”

“That’s what you took from this?”

“Yep. When are you tying that boy down, anyway? You’ve been together, like, an entire decade, and I’m _waiting_ for my bridesmaid request.”

“On and off,” Piper reminds her sister. “And we’ve been off for over a year.”

Their last breakup isn’t something she’s eager to talk to her siblings about. They already think she and Jason are weirdly codependent and stuck in the past, she doesn’t want to add in the information that, nine breakups out of ten, they’ve split up due to the absence of a dead boy. She does sometimes worry that this will be the one that sticks, but she can’t think about that tonight.

Drew rolls her eyes, but lets the subject drop.

It doesn’t take much longer for Piper to be zipped into her dress, which is way more sparkly and tight than she’d ever choose for herself. She doesn’t complain, because it’s actually pretty comfortable, and she knows the importance of it besides. Over the years she’s become all too familiar with the way that beauty and money intersect, even in the humanitarian sector.

Drew leads the way downstairs, no doubt wanting to make an entrance, and Piper takes a deep breath before following. By the time she reaches the living room, Drew has sidled up next to Jason and begun chatting his ear off about something or another, but Jason’s attention is split between the conversation and the two small children climbing on him like he’s a jungle gym. Percy and Sally’s youngest, on the other hand, are slouched on opposite ends of the sofa and watching cartoons with the same blank stare.

“Hey, Estelle,” Piper says warmly. She grabs her purse off the coffee table, amused by the way Percy and Estelle both lean a little bit to see around her. “You gonna help Jay with your nephews?”

“Nah,” says Estelle.

Percy stands to greet her, though, and their eyebrows fly up. “Looking good, McLean.”

“Thanks, Jackson.” Piper smiles and straightens Percy’s tie. “Did the kids pick this one out? You know this is a fairly dressy event.”

The tie has cartoon fish on it, in stark contrast to Percy’s tailored navy suit and striped shirt. Percy just grins and slaps her hand away. “Shut up. It’s a fundraiser for the conservation of marine life, so. Fishes.”

“I mean, do whatever you want,” Piper says on a laugh.

“I will! I’m not the one asking people who don’t give a damn about the environment for money.”

“Does Annabeth know you’re wearing it?”

“Yeah, she’s got a plain one in her purse in case I embarrass her.” Percy grins and ruffles Estelle’s hair. “Be good for Jason, squirt, I’ll be back late.” Estelle grumbles about her hair getting messed up, but Percy is already shouting the same ‘be good’ sentiment at their sons, who are hanging off one of Jason’s arms each like tiny monkeys.

“Okay,” the twins chorus. Piper is sure that they know as well as anyone that Percy is a major pushover and Annabeth, by far, is the scarier option.

“Annabeth’s outside with the car,” says Percy. “She had a call from work.”

“And you couldn’t have shouted up to me twenty minutes ago?” Piper asks, aghast at the thought of Annabeth sitting in her car while everyone else was inside.

Percy shrugs. “I was watching Teen Titans. And it’s fine, she had shit to say to her coworkers.”

“It’s still rude to keep her waiting. You ready, Drew?”

“Yep,” says Drew, pulling a small compact mirror from her cleavage to check her lipstick. It’s the same colour she put Piper in. She likes to have their makeup and outfits complementary so that they look stunning in pictures taken together, _and_ it means Piper won’t forget her lipstick at home. Again.

“Be safe, don’t be idiots,” Jason tells the three of them as tiny children try to wrestle him to the ground. He pointedly does not look at Piper. Jason has never been comfortable with seeing Piper in a full face, but he has started to outright hate it the past few years.

“No promises,” Percy says, herding Piper and Drew out the door. Their silver hatchback is waiting in the parking spot that Piper pays for but never uses, and the three of them rush down the stoop so they don’t keep Annabeth waiting any longer than they already have. Annabeth holds up a finger as they clamber in, and Piper pushes carseats and toys out of the way so she and Drew can sit.

“When I left the office today, you hadn’t even figured out where the bathrooms were going to go,” Annabeth says in a cool, professional voice as she merges onto the street. “And now you’re proposing a fountain in the atrium? Make the building function, then you can make it pretty. Goodbye.” She presses a button on her steering wheel to end the call and sighs deeply.

“Interns?” Percy asks sympathetically, their hand finding its way to Annabeth’s knee like a magnet.

“Yeah, and it’s nice to have the extra help around the firm, but these kids think they can put as much thought into blueprints as they put into the Sims.” Annabeth meets Piper’s eyes in the rearview. “Nice to see you both, sorry I’m so scattered.”

“You’re fine,” says Drew, waving a perfectly manicured hand dismissively. “You have a company relying on you and three kids. You’re allowed to be a little scattered, babe.”

“Oh, Estelle isn’t ours. She’s Percy’s sister.”

“I’m talking about your manchild of a husband. There are goldfish on his tie.”

“First of all,” Percy says, turning their whole body to look at Drew, “they’re _koi_.”

Annabeth laughs. She gives Percy such a fond look that Piper almost feels intrusive for having seen it. “Second of all, and more importantly, Percy stopped using masculine nouns and pronouns a while back. Neutral or bust.”

“Third of all, they’re not married,” Piper chimes in before Drew can awkwardly apologise. She knows that isn’t what Percy cares about - they’ve had a ‘no harm, no foul’ sort of attitude towards their friends slipping up, and it isn’t like Drew would have known ahead of time - and luckily the statement is enough to sufficiently distract her sister.

“You’ve been engaged for thirty years!”

“Nine,” Annabeth corrects her, as if Drew truly believes they’ve been engaged longer than they’ve been alive. “We just always have more important things to put our time and money into.”

Drew looks at Piper like she expects some kind of backup, but Piper only shrugs. At this point, she would be more surprised to receive that wedding invitation in the mail than not. Percy and Annabeth got engaged their senior year of high school and never once got around to planning anything. Annabeth didn’t even get a ring for another few years, although that’s more understandable, since Percy hadn’t had a job at seventeen, and also Annabeth had popped the question.

“Nine years is literally a third of your life,” Piper contributes, but she doesn’t expect this to be an argument that she and Drew win.

“Huh, I guess it has been,” says Percy.

“That doesn’t really change anything,” says Annabeth, “but it does put how long it’s been in perspective.”

“Jason and Piper have been together almost as long,” Percy adds. “Nobody’s bothering them about getting married.”

“I literally did just that an hour ago, and Piper says they aren’t even together.”

That makes Percy snort, and Piper tries really hard not to get offended by it. “Sure they aren’t. Hey, Pipes, why don’t you tell the car how many nights you spend in your own bed? You can even round up if you want. It won’t help your case.”

“That’s really none of your business,” Piper scowls.

“Just like it isn’t your business when Annabeth becomes a Jackson.”

“Honey, you know I’m not taking your name.”

“It’s a figure of speech -”

Another round of bickering sets off, Piper’s friends all talking over each other. She decides to stay quiet this time, watching the city pass through the window. The implication that she and Jason are sleeping together stings a bit - especially as it isn’t true except in the strictest sense of lying next to each other. They haven’t even kissed in over a year, not even at their most vulnerable moments. Not even when she really wanted to.

Piper supposes that she asked for it by putting her two cents in. Percy has never been one to pull punches. Even so, having Jason inside her head to make her feel all sorts of ways is really annoying.

It distracts her for the rest of the night, making it more and more difficult to pay attention to the speeches from sanctuary board members, but luckily Drew is beside her to give her a sharp elbow to the side whenever she zones out too long.

There had been a time, not long after Leo’s death, where the idea of marrying Jason hadn’t been so ridiculous and hurtful. They loved each other, after all, and even with a short break while they decided if the false start to their relationship was a dealbreaker or not, they were generally pretty happy together.

Then, the months started fading into years, and Leo was still nowhere to be found. Nico had told them that he couldn’t feel Leo in the Underworld even though he and Hazel felt him die, but while the news gave Jason hope, it caused tension between him and Piper. Their relationship got rockier, as if Leo was one of the bonds holding the two of them together and the uncertainty surrounding his death stretched that bond too thin to grasp.

Last year was the first time they actually said it out loud. They’d been watching TLC wedding show reruns and Jason had said, “I don’t know if I want to marry you.”

Piper had shaken her head. Agreed with him. “Not without Leo. He should be there.”

“He should be here,” Jason had said.

“He’s not,” Piper had said.

“He could be,” Jason had said.

“He won’t be,” Piper had said. Then, “It kind of feels like we shouldn’t be together at all without Leo.”

When people ask them why they broke up for the longest amount of time yet, they don’t bother trying to explain the real reason. It’s complicated. We’re better off as friends. Anything to get the people in their life off of their backs.

Admitting that their relationship has an unbreachable valley caused by the death of a boy they only knew for a year in their teens isn’t something that Piper wants to deal with. It would sound crazy if she said it out loud. At this point in her life, she’s known Jason for several years longer than she ever knew Leo, but that doesn’t seem to matter to her heart. They’re intrinsically linked for her, her storm and her fire, deeper than anything she’s felt before.

Piper still loves Jason. They never stopped loving each other, that was never the problem. The problem is that neither of them can say the word anymore. Not without thinking about the smile that stretched Leo’s face as he reminded them to trust him right before the flames overtook him; as he told them he loved them for the first and last time before they plummeted to the ground.

It’s a trigger, a visceral one, and one that has kept them orbiting around each other like planets without a sun.

Drew’s elbow catches her again. “It’s your turn to talk,” she hisses.

Oh, right. The fundraiser. Piper isn’t sure she can shake off this mood long enough to remember her whole speech. She grips Drew’s wrist. “Come up with me?”

Her sister sighs, but stands with her anyway. She stands beside Piper at the podium while Piper waxes poetic about how important donations are to wildlife conservatories, and then steps up to finish the speech herself as if they’d planned it. Drew explains how putting money into the environment benefits society and the economy as a whole, playing on their rich guests’ priorities. They use enough charmspeak between them that guests are moving to the donation table before they’ve finished speaking.

After enduring a polite round of applause, Piper escapes to the bathroom. She wants to splash water on her face, but she has no idea if any of her makeup is waterproof. She sets her palms on the counter and looks in the mirror instead.

Piper both looks like herself and doesn’t. She understands why Jason hates it when she has a full face on, but it’s not like she’s trying to look different, per se. It is a weapon, same as any dagger or sword, used when necessary. She still remembers the way Jason reacted when she first got her blessing, that first confusing night at camp, and for a moment it feels like she’s going to start crying.

Tonight is going to be harder than she’s prepared for. She doesn’t make a habit of doing this, but now feels like as good a time as any to focus on the tight feeling in her chest and speak to her reflection. “Mom, I know you love this heartbreak stuff, but I can’t _take_ it right now. Please, I need a distraction.”

“Wow,” says a familiar voice from the bathroom doorway. “You must really be desperate.”

Sometimes Aphrodite comes through. Piper feels the knot in her chest start to loosen, and she smiles without turning around. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, y’know, spending dad’s money on shit he doesn’t approve of. Something I know you’re intimately familiar with.” Rachel comes into frame behind Piper, her mischievous eyes meeting Piper’s in the mirror.

“You look great,” Piper says warmly, and Rachel smiles back at her.

“Not as great as you do.”

It isn’t worth arguing, not when Piper’s entire being will radiate beauty without her trying or even wanting it to. Still, Rachel’s black dress and simple braid really work for showing off the freckles on her shoulders and chest. Piper turns and leans against the sink, so she can look Rachel up and down.

“It’s so nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Rachel says with a small smirk. “So, praying to your mom at a party, huh?”

“Not really a party.”

Rachel laughs and steps closer into Piper’s space. It makes Piper’s heart rate pick up in a way she hasn’t felt in months. “Pedantic. You and Jason still broken up?”

“Yes, but.” Piper hesitates. “It’s complicated.”

Another laugh, this time accompanied by a roll of Rachel’s eyes and a soft hand on Piper’s arm. “It’s always complicated with the two of you. I’ll be more specific, then - are you back to monogamous commitment, or do you want to come home with me tonight?”

It’s been a while, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Piper ended up in Rachel’s bed. She’s always up for a good casual fling, which makes her the perfect distraction from the tragedy of Piper’s love life. She makes a mental note to thank her mom later.

“I’ve still got to make the rounds, but I’ll be ready to leave in about an hour,” she tells Rachel, who smiles.

“I’ll be with Fish Tie,” she laughs, leaning in to kiss the corner of Piper’s mouth. She’s so careful not to mess up either of their lipstick, which is both a relief and a disappointment. “See you out there.”

* * *

Piper toes off her heels at the front door, not wanting to wake Jason with the sound of them on the hardwood. She needn’t have bothered.

“You’re home late,” Jason says from the sofa. He’s sprawled across it, still watching cartoons even though the kids have long since gone home, and his glasses are crooked. Piper feels the strongest urge to fix them.

With a twinge of unnecessary guilt, Piper plods barefoot into the living room and sits on one of their cushy, mismatched armchairs. She tucks her legs up under her and tries to get comfortable. “Yeah, I ran into Rachel at the fundraiser.”

“Oh, cool.” Jason’s tone is still mild, and he might have gotten away with sounding normal if Piper didn’t see his expression shutter at the mention of Rachel.

“Don’t do that,” Piper sighs.

“I’m not doing anything, Piper.”

“You are, and it isn’t fair.” Piper feels like she ought to be angry or apologetic or whatever, but at this point she’s just tired. “We’re not together. I can fuck whoever I want, and it isn’t fair of you to act like I’m hurting you when I do.”

Jason looks as tired as she feels, all of a sudden. He doesn’t look away from the television. “I know that.”

“If you know, then why am I always the bad guy? How come you don’t - I don’t know, sign up for Tinder or something?”

It isn’t like Jason would have a hard time finding another girl, whether it was for something casual or more long term. He’s gorgeous and smart and brave and more or less unemployed, lots of time on his hands that he could be using to date while he pretends that he’s working on a new book.

He doesn’t try, though. He never does.

Jason shrugs. “I don’t want to fuck anybody else.”

The statement itself is so simple, but it knocks the breath out of Piper. Grief crashes over her like a tidal wave. “Don’t say that,” she whispers.

“Why not? It’s true.”

Piper can hear the words that he isn’t saying, that they no longer say out loud, and she can’t deal with all of the emotions those unspoken words trigger when she still has lipstick smears on her thighs. She stands up and leaves the room. Jason does not try to stop her.

* * *

A familiar poster hangs on the wall that Piper is facing. She’s in a bed that’s too small, afternoon light spilling through the thin curtains and shining on the image of her father’s most famous role. Her dorm room at Wilderness School is exactly how she remembers it - not homey at all, cement blocks for walls and windows that don’t open. There aren’t any bars on them, but that’s not from lack of trying by Coach Hedge.

“Change of scenery from the roof, at least,” she says out loud, and the arm around her waist tightens its hold. She knows, like she’s known every time she dreams about these things, that Jason isn’t actually spooned up behind her. They aren’t actually taking a nap instead of going to chem. It’s just another fake memory.

After their argument last night, though, Piper is willing to let herself enjoy the embrace anyway. She finds Jason’s hand to link their fingers together.

Oh. She blinks and looks down, bewildered at first by how dark and slender the fingers threaded through hers are. As soon as she hears him chuckle, she relaxes. She should have expected this.

“This one is fuzzier,” Leo says into her shoulder.

“How d’you mean?” asks Piper. The room seems fairly steady to her, the hand in hers only occasionally flickering to Jason’s large, white hand. She thinks that this memory is actually far more solid aside from Leo’s inexplicable presence.

“I keep going between this bunk and the top one,” says Leo. “Like the dream can’t decide where to put me.”

Piper remembers afternoons like this, and she knows that Leo used to join them for afternoon naps, while he never did on the roof.

“Maybe because you were here in Hera’s version of things,” Piper suggests, leaning more of her body into Leo’s warmth. He exudes it from every inch of his body, giving the vague impression of being held by a space heater. It’s one of the things she misses most about him, if she’s honest, because it made her feel safe even during the most dangerous time of her life.

Leo hums. “So this is where I was in reality? Cuddled up with you?”

The question stuns Piper into silence. She’s never really considered the possibility that she is also _missing_ memories from this time period, replaced with a fake Jason. It had never really seemed important - she knew that she and Leo were best friends, what more did she need to know? Her worldview shifts a bit at the idea that there is something she does need to know, something Hera didn’t like and tried to change by throwing a Jason-shaped wrench into it all.

She does not reply, but Leo has never been bothered by the concept of talking to himself.

“Sorry about hanging that up.” Leo points their joined hands at the Tristan McLean poster with a soft laugh. “I thought it would be funny.”

“I mean, it’s your room, too,” Piper says, a smile playing around her lips. “You could hang whatever you wanted.”

“That’s true. Also, you drew a mustache on him with Sharpie at some point.”

“Yep. Don’t regret that.”

“I never thought you would.”

For a while, they lay in silence. It’s so warm and relaxing in Leo’s arms that, even though she’s in a dream already, Piper feels like she’s going to fall asleep. The nagging worry that her memory has not just been overridden, but _stolen_ from her is all that keeps her eyes open.

Instead, her gaze lands on the desk under the window that they were expected to share. Papers are strewn everywhere and post-it notes are on every possible surface. Piper had never had to share a room before, so living with Leo was an exercise in patience. Luckily, she’s fairly certain that Leo hadn’t had his own room since before his mom died, and so he was much better at navigating possible disputes.

“I never really thought about it at the time,” Piper says slowly, “but it was, like, really shitty of them to put you here.”

“Gonna have to be more specific, Beauty Queen. Nevada? Glorified juvie? Earth?”

Piper laughs. “The girls’ dorm.”

There’s a strange motion against her back. If she had to guess, she’d say that Leo is shrugging. “Not the worst thing my government name ever landed me,” Leo says breezily. “I mean, I got misgendered all the time, everywhere, my whole life, but this time wasn’t so terrible.”

“What made this time different?” Piper asks softly, not sure if her subconscious Leo will duck emotions with a joke, too.

He doesn’t. His tone is still light, but he oozes genuineness as he says, “It got me you, didn’t it?”

This is her teenage body, the only one Leo ever knew, but it is her dream. She probably shouldn’t be so surprised when Leo presses a chaste kiss behind her ear, exactly where a tattoo is on her adult body. The placement surprises Piper far more than the kiss itself, and she falls quiet again.

* * *

If Piper didn’t have Jason around to temper her impulse control, she would probably be covered head to toe in tattoos by now. As it stands, she’s got about a dozen. The ones she can’t see all the time escape her memory, like she’s got the object permanence of a baby, but that’s more or less the right number. She’s got a lot of disposable income and a lot of dumb ideas, so it’s good that she has someone to tell her when she’s being completely ridiculous.

Not that Jason is much better. He has more tattoos than she does. The mirrored eagles and tallies on his forearms are the only big ones, one emblazoned with SPQR and the other with the word ‘home’ in careful Greek lettering.

That had caused quite a stir when he first got it, the camps still at a tenuous peace, but Jason had been so sure of the concept. It helped that Percy got it done, too, but they confided in Piper that it was due to the cost of removing the Roman versus adding the Greek, and not at all to help foster unity in the camps like Jason’s was.

They would be Jason’s only tattoos, actually, if Nico di Angelo hadn’t developed a stick and poke hobby a couple years back. Piper has some work from Nico as well, but she’d waited for him to get a proper gun and shop. Jason, on the other hand, had willingly been a test subject while Nico was learning. As such, he has a bunch of tiny doodles scattered all over him. Piper’s personal favourite is the crooked smiley face on his hip, but she knows Jason is fond of the cheesy lightning bolt on the side of his middle finger. He does get mistaken for a Potter superfan a lot, but he doesn’t mind.

Nico is good at bold lines and geometric designs, but colour work is not his area. He’s done a few of Piper’s smaller pieces - moon phases, a quote or two, intricate flowers - but she went to Rachel for the design of her sleeve and paid top dollar for the best colour work artist on the East coast. In total it had taken around thirty hours to complete, over the course of several sessions, but it’s exactly what she wanted.

Festus curls around her left bicep, breathing fire that extends past her shoulder and onto her collarbone. He’s detailed and golden and absolutely stunning. Her forearm has a forest that Festus is flying over, reminiscent of the woods around camp.

She has a couple of more hidden tattoos, too. A lipstick print on her ass, a stretching cat silhouette on her ribs. The one that Leo kissed in her dream is still the most intimate. Jason hasn’t even seen it.

It’s a couple months fresh, along the curve behind her ear, and it’s her simplest one. Three letters of Morse Code. Nico had been reluctant to give it to her once he learned what it said, because he has a rule not to tattoo names onto people. Piper won that argument on the basis that it’s a memorial tattoo, not a boyfriend or something of the sort. Nico had asked if she was sure. Reminded her that he couldn’t feel Leo in the Underworld.

After so many years, Piper had been certain that Leo _had_ to be dead. But Nico isn’t changing his tune, Jason’s depression is getting worse, and Piper’s dreams are only so clear when her godly side is trying to tell her something.

She’s still pretty certain, but… she wants a firm answer. It’s been ten years. She deserves one, and she thinks she knows where to get it.

* * *

“So, why did you make me come all the way to Brooklyn?”

Piper rolls her eyes. “Even without your ability to shadow travel, Long Island is _not_ that far.”

“It’s the principle of the thing. I hate Brooklyn.”

“Fuck you,” Piper says mildly. She takes a sip of her coffee and Nico mirrors her, like he’d forgotten it was in front of him. He doesn’t grimace or actively complain, which usually means he likes it.

They’re cloistered at a corner table in a new vegan café. Piper has been wanting to try it for weeks, but she always ends up walking past. Nico has his feet up on the third chair, knees akimbo in a way that doesn’t look comfortable. He seems like he’s just woken up - his hair is messy and soft over his forehead, no product in it, and he’s only got a couple of his piercings in like he’d given up halfway to getting ready. The skinny jeans and long sleeved v-neck in the middle of June really add to the whole aesthetic.

Sometimes, Piper considers looking up her old MySpace and showing Nico that whole subculture so he can see once and for all that he’s a decade or so behind everyone else. He’d probably consider that fairly good, considering. She’s not doing it today, though. She has more important things to do.

She leans forward, elbows on the table, and injects some very subtle charmspeak into her voice. “You’re in Brooklyn because I need to ask you something.”

“What is it?” Nico asks, and she’s a little proud of how un-suspicious he looks. She decides to keep her voice at this level.

“I need you to give me a straight answer.”

“Sure. As straight as I can be.”

Piper snorts and smacks his arm. “I’m being serious, here. Nico. I need you to tell me where Leo is.”

The first sign of doubt crosses Nico’s face, and he looks down at his mug.

“I don’t know.”

“Is Leo dead?”

“I don’t _know_.”

“If he’s alive, why hasn’t he contacted us?”

“Piper, I don’t know.”

“You said you would give me a straight answer,” Piper reminds him, watching for any sign of something being kept from her. Nico can still be pretty cagey when he wants to be.

“I am,” Nico says, meeting her eyes again. There’s a plea in them now, a ‘believe me’, but Piper isn’t finished.

“Will your dad know if Leo is dead?”

“Yes,” Nico says, and then he looks a bit annoyed for giving up the answer so quickly. Or maybe he’s annoyed that he never thought to ask Hades about Leo. “But there are rules, Piper. I can’t just bring you to the Underworld so you can ask him a question.”

“No, you can’t,” Piper agrees. Done being subtle, she _pushes_ with her charmspeak. “But you can call him to come here in his mortal form, and that’s what you’re going to do.”

Nico nods, but part of him is still resisting the thrall. He’s hesitating. It’s always a bit more difficult to charm people who aren’t attracted to her, but it’s not impossible. “I can get my dad to come talk to you,” he agrees, slow, “but he won’t give information away for free.”

“You let me handle that,” Piper says, sugary sweet. She’s not really scared of any gods anymore. Maybe she had been as a teenager, new to this life and not sure what to expect, but put her through a war or two that she has to fight for them and they aren’t so scary anymore. The war is the reason for everything wrong in her life. She won’t hold back from telling a god where to shove it.

Though he isn’t the easiest to read, Piper can tell that Nico is torn. Normally, she reserves her strongest charmspeak for monsters and catatonic Jason, because the idea of taking away someone’s free will is truly horrifying.

These are desperate times. She can’t get an audience with Hades any other way, and she cannot keep living in limbo for the rest of her life.

In the face of Nico’s hesitation, knowing that he might never trust her again, Piper compels him.

“You want to get your dad and bring him here now,” Piper says, pressing her fingers to the back of Nico’s hand. Physicality makes the thrall even stronger, which can be difficult with someone like Nico, who normally cringes away from casual touches. “You will help us get the answer we all need to put Leo to rest at last.”

“Okay,” says Nico. He looks a little dazed as he stands, leaving his coffee on the table, and disappears into the shadows.

Piper tries to find it in herself to feel guilt, but all she can manage is sadness. She hopes that Nico won’t hold a grudge. Everything she knows about him says that this hope is futile, so. Instead she hopes it’s worth it.

She doesn’t have to wait long. Nico comes back through the door of the café with a tall man on his heels before Piper is even finished her drink. The barista looks bewildered by Nico’s appearance but laughs to herself, evidently deciding she must not have seen Nico leave the building.

Piper stands, because she may not be afraid of Hades, but she knows better than to disrespect a god who has done her no wrong. Nico comes back to the table and resumes his coffee, but Hades stays standing until Piper sits down.

“Thank you for coming,” says Piper, laying on the soft charm.

Hades scowls and waves a hand as if to physically ward Piper’s voice away. When he does that, Nico’s whole body stiffens.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Hades says in a low, oily voice. “Most mortals don’t have the kind of… confidence that comes from summoning me for a mere question, let alone using my child to get me here.”

Honestly, Piper has a lot of questions now that Hades is in front of her. Is he making himself look like Nico or is the no-godly-DNA claim complete bullshit, because Hades and Nico resemble each other in an unmistakable way? Have the fallen demigods of the past few years suffered terribly? Why are Nico and Hazel still the only children of the Underworld?

Piper has a feeling that any question she voices will be treated as the question he’s here for, so she swallows them down.

“I want to know if someone is dead or not,” she says, careful to keep her tone free of charm or query. She doesn’t look at Nico. “Your children tell me that they felt this person die, but something about the death felt ‘weird’. I’ve waited ten years for an answer that they can’t give me.”

Hades regards her with cool, black eyes. After a moment he nods and pulls a small device out of his inner suit jacket pocket. It looks like a tablet and he taps on it with a long stylus. “Name and date of death.”

“Leo Valdez,” Nico speaks up, his expression shuttered. “And he died -”

“That’s not his legal name,” Piper interrupts. “Does that make a difference?”

“Nicknames usually work to search by -”

“They do,” Hades agrees, putting his tablet away. His face is unreadable, which unnerves Piper. She’s usually very good at reading people. “But the search isn’t necessary. I know who and where Leo Valdez is.”

Here it is. Piper steels herself. “Right. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“He was,” Hades says coolly, and Piper’s stomach plummets like she’s on a twisty rollercoaster. “If you ask me, he should be dead.”

Nico sits up straight, his dark eyes sparkling with something that looks like fear. Fear for Leo, wherever he is? Fear for not knowing? Fear for Jason’s ability to cope with something that everyone else had given up as a lost hope?

“Where?” Nico asks, half out of his seat like he plans to drag Leo back himself. “Where is he?”

Piper opens her mouth to contribute, only to find that she has no words. Drawing a breath is impeded by what feels like a cyclops standing on her chest. This is a panic attack, she can acknowledge in a detached sort of way. She’s having a panic attack. Because Leo has been alive, probably this whole time, and what has she been doing? Putting on fancy dresses and fighting with Jason. She should have been out there looking, should have listened to Jason, should have -

Hades’ voice cuts through her racing thoughts, pulling her back to earth. “Leo Valdez has been on Olympus since he cheated death while we decide what to do with him. He will not be released until the gods come to a decision on the matter.”


	2. LEO II: burned, about to burn, still on fire

Leo doesn’t remember dying.

There’s a blur of action and fire before the brief darkness, a blur of island and Calypso after it, but the act itself eludes him. Maybe that’s for the best.

He’d gotten on Festus’ back, Calypso right behind him and hope in his heart, but that didn’t last long. Almost immediately after they leave the island that Calypso has been trapped on for millennia, there’s a flash of lightning and they are struck from the sky. He remembers thinking, great, Zeus is smiting me for killing his mom, and then everything goes dark.

Getting struck by lightning felt more like death than his actual death did, and that’s his excuse for waking up in a white marble room and immediately thinking, huh. Maybe his Aunt Rosa was right about the afterlife after all, because this sure looks more like Heaven than the River Styx. No angels come to greet him, though, and he slowly returns to his senses. He knows he’s alive because his heart is beating and his arm hurts real bad, so he scraps the Heaven theory.

Standing slowly, not wanting to jostle his arm anymore, Leo takes stock of his surroundings. He’d been laid out on a comfortable pile of large cushions in the middle of the room with an unlit hearth on one wall beside him and basic bathroom plumbing on the other. No doors. No windows. No Calypso. Light seems to come from the marble itself somehow.

Leo’s head is still fuzzy from the whole electrocution thing, but he feels sharper all of a sudden, less comfortable. This isn’t heaven, this is a prison cell.

For what feels like hours, Leo paces around the tiny room. Everything in it is made of marble, the floors and walls and ceiling and fireplace and even the _taps_ that don’t appear to connect to anything resembling mortal plumbing. Leo’s pretty good at puzzles. Lightning bringing him to a prison with magic plumbing points directly to the Olympians, Zeus specifically. He feels pretty uneasy about that whole concept.

He ends up at the hearth. It’s cool to the touch and has a neat pile of firewood inside it, but there’s no poker or extra wood anywhere to be seen. Maybe it’s decorative. It could also be some kind of trap, but Leo can only look at the same four walls for so long.

Crouching down, Leo holds out a hand to the wood and calls fire to his fingers in a way that’s become second nature since the war started.

Nothing happens.

A thrill of panic shoots through Leo’s confusion - his powers are being suppressed. He can’t fight back. His mind and body go into overdrive like he’s been zapped again. He needs to get out of here.

He puts his head in the fireplace but there isn’t any sort of flue. He tears apart the cushions but there is nothing useful inside. He takes apart the sink with his dirty, scratched-up hands but still finds nothing. It’s basically doll furniture. Even so, he takes apart the toilet and tub to be safe. They yield the same results. Marble bits of plumbing and torn cushions surround the floor around him by the time Leo’s body is ready to crash. He has no way of knowing how long it takes before he passes out on the floor, head pillowed on half a cushion.

Leo’s dreams are muddy, unclear, and he still feels groggy when he opens his eyes. He’s still in the marble prison, but things have changed.

The cushions are fixed. Most likely magic was used, because there aren’t any splits in the seams. There are a pile of folded clothes and towels on the hearth, which is crackling away happily, and next to them is a stack of ambrosia cubes. Curiously, Leo picks one up and jumps back a bit when it is immediately replaced.

It all looks so hospitable and warm that Leo doesn’t want to trust it at all, but his stomach growls and he pops the cube in his mouth. The ambrosia tastes amazing, and his arm feels better, but he’s still freaked out. He looks behind him, and sure enough, the plumbing is back in pristine condition, like he never tore it open with his dirty hands. He’s not sure how all of this happened without him waking up.

“Okay,” he says out loud, the quiet getting to him. “This is still prison, right? It’s just, like, a five star prison. Like where Martha Stewart probably went.”

The walls don’t answer him. He honestly doesn’t know if it’s a relief or not.

Aware that it might be stupid of him, Leo slowly puts his hand into the small fire. His anxiety lessens when it doesn’t burn. So, his offensive power was taken away, but they left him with his defensive. That doesn’t seem accidental. In fact, that seems like it would be harder than suppressing them all together.

The clean, fluffy towels and what look to be pretty basic mortal clothing, if not exactly Leo’s style, are definitely catching his eye now that he’s certain there’s no way out. It seems like someone fairly powerful is keeping him here - if Zeus isn’t the one behind this, someone just as capable and deadly has got him locked up tight. He runs a hand over the top towel with a sigh. Gods, it’s been so long since he had a hot bath.

By all logic, the plumbing shouldn’t work. There’s nothing but wall behind it. Hot water pours from the faucet when Leo turns it, regardless of logic.

There’s no real guarantee that Leo isn’t being watched by someone, but he can’t just spend however long he’s here without using the toilet or tub. He splashes cold water on his face from the basin while the tub fills. Suddenly aware of how very thirsty he is, Leo cups his hands under the stream and brings them to his lips.

Damn. Leo’s lived on tap water his whole life, but it’s never been so clear and good. He’d have been lucky if it ran clear, back then. Somehow, it has a taste. Water isn’t supposed to taste like anything, not from the tap.

“Definitely in a cell for rich, white people,” Leo mutters to himself. He looks around for toiletries. “Jeez, you’d think I could at least get a toothbrush. I’m taking a star off my Yelp review.”

 

* * *

 

The next time Leo wakes up, there is a red plastic toothbrush and a family-size tube of toothpaste resting on the sink.

 

* * *

 

Leo is a STEM enthusiast first and a demigod second. He starts conducting experiments, trying to figure out the rules of the magic being used. If he can’t put his brain towards an escape plan, he’s sure as hell going to learn as much as he can about his new living situation.

Things only ever appear or change when Leo sleeps. Faking sleep does not work. Staying awake as long as he can does not work. Holding things or keeping clothes on his body stops them from being altered, but he has no way of knowing if that’s because he would wake up otherwise or for some other reason.

Is it the room itself doing these things or is it an external force? That’s an easy thing to test. Leo’s thoughts do not make something appear, nor does asking for things sarcastically out loud. There are strict limits - he can summon any kind of food he wants from anywhere in the world, but asking for ingredients and utensils doesn’t work. That one is too bad, actually, because Leo rather likes cooking. It also puzzles him a bit. He can’t figure out that parameter at all until he needs scissors for a haircut that never appear, and then it clicks.

He’s not being given anything he can potentially use as a weapon. He has to get comfortable eating with his hands as well, which is easier now that he’s got all the soap and clean water he could ever want, but is still an adjustment. They’re overestimating him a bit if they think he can take down a god with a pair of scissors or a spoon, but whatever.

The specificity of what gets provided and the request needing to be verbal and genuine point to an external force rather than the room itself being magic. Leo doesn’t rule it out completely, unfamiliar with godly magic as he is, but it seems more likely that someone is listening to his requests and fulfilling the ones that are allowed. This leads, of course, to another several sleeps’ worth of language experiments. English, Greek, and Spanish all return the same level of result, but his stilted Latin and French give him different results completely. He can’t be sure if the error in translation is on his end or the receiver’s end, so he stops trying languages he doesn’t know very well.

What Leo finds the most interesting is what happens when he uses non-verbal communication. ASL doesn’t work at all, which is a relief - whoever is granting his requests most likely can’t see him, then - and letters in Morse get missed if he doesn’t go slowly. Instead of a brush he gets a bush, a small potted plant that he dutifully waters every time he wakes up. He isn’t sure if it even needs water, but it gives him something to tend to.

He makes mental notes of everything he’s learning until he thinks to ask for a notebook, where he writes everything down and looks at it again. He has no real idea how long he was here before he got the pen. It’s all so fuzzy. Now he has a method of tracking the days he spends here, at least. He tallies them up on a ripped-out a sheet of paper and keeps it on him at all times so it never disappears when he sleeps. Of course, he has no way of knowing when it’s night or day than for his own need to crash. He doesn’t love how unreliable it is, but it’s all he’s got.

Leo’s hair gets longer than he likes to take care of, and with no way to chop it off, he starts looking for other ways to keep it out of his face. He’s never really had to braid his hair before, and he doesn’t have much practice. He has braided Piper’s hair in the past, but her hair texture is so drastically different from his that he gives up the rope braiding almost immediately.

Okay. So that’s not going to work.

There’s no mirror in the room, but that’s on purpose. Leo thinks he’d go batshit if he had to look at himself, and he’s pretty sure he would be denied it anyway, since glass is so sharp. Still, the lack of mirror makes braiding more of a challenge.

The problem is that his hair simply doesn’t go up in a bun or a ponytail without brushing it out until his biceps hurt. The other problem is that his hair has never been long, not even when he was a kid and didn’t know how to describe why the femininity felt so wrong. His mom had always kept her hair buzzed close to her head, and cut his own curls in their small kitchen every couple of weeks. Esperanza was bald often, on each fresh buzz, and Leo remembers watching her shave her head and thinking that his mom was so cool.

He has seen people with his hair texture making all kinds of braids work, obviously, but he doesn’t know how to reverse-engineer any of them on himself. No matter what he does, he either feels uncomfortable or his curls spring out within a few minutes.

“It’s just a braid,” Leo mutters to himself. “It’s hair. It’s hair you don’t have control over anymore, but it’s just _hair_.”

This is not a hard task. It is also not necessary, apart from Leo feeling oncoming dysphoria when his curls start to tickle his shoulders. Maybe if he just leaves it alone, it will eventually dread, but he doesn’t have that kind of patience. His hair is another puzzle, one that he hates, and he keeps muttering to himself as he keeps trying, over and over, to get the curls out of his face and off his shoulders.

Finally, the frustration gets the best of Leo. He wakes up with hair in his eyes and he snaps. He launches himself towards the hearth to try and burn it all off.

“You’re fireproof, idiot,” he reminds himself, scowling at nothing in particular as he sits back on his heels. “This is so fucking stupid! Just let me cut my hair! Am I being tortured?”

Of course, nobody replies.

Leo stands up and starts pacing around the room, so furious that he’d be smoking at the ears if he was still able to do so. He keeps talking to the walls, volume rising steadily until his throat starts to sting.

“Why am I even here? Why don’t you tell me where I am and why I’m being held like some kind of criminal? I know someone is listening out there! You’re the fucking worst, you know that? Every other god is better than you! Every other _mortal_ is better than you! Why don’t you show yourself? Scared I’m gonna beat you?”

The egos of gods and creatures on Olympus are well known, so Leo is genuinely shocked when nothing happens. The lack of swift punishment for the insult throws him, makes him think that maybe he’s not on Olympus after all. Filled with a whole new wave of frustration and fury, Leo picks up his notebook of hypotheses and hurls it into the hearth. He gets a sick sort of vindication watching it catch fire and start to burn. The pages curl and smoke rises from them, somehow not filling the room despite the lack of flue.

Leo stares into the fire for so long that he starts to hallucinate, because he blinks and there is a young girl sitting in the crackling flames, her eyes reflecting them.

“That was a gift,” she says mildly. “Why are you so angry, Leo?”

For a moment, Leo is lost for words. The girl cocks her head curiously, like she truly has no idea what’s bothering him, and he shakes his head to try and clear it. “Why - I’ve been locked in a glorified prison cell for _months_ with no explanation, little girl, why do you _think_ I’m mad?”

“I forgot how little time it takes for mortals to get impatient,” the girl says. She seems genuinely apologetic, which is enough to make Leo pause and sit down hard on the marble floor.

“I have… many questions.”

“I know you must,” says the girl. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Leo sits forward, invigorated by the promise of answers at last. “Where am I, why am I here, why do only some requests work, are you the one keeping me here, who _are_ you, where are Calypso and Festus, how long have I been here, who -”

The girl decides to interrupt him, which is a good move on her part. “You’re in a holding cell on Mount Olympus while our family argues about your fate. Leo, you broke so many fundamental rules of life and death by coming back, and many gods are unhappy about the ripple effect you have caused. I am not the one keeping you here, my brother is, but I am the one using my judgement in fulfilling your wants and needs. My name is Hestia. Your friend and invention broke none of the rules that you have, and so they have been returned to Earth. I do not know how long it has been. Mortal time is different to ours, obviously, and demigods such as Annabeth Chase have mentioned that time runs differently here altogether.”

That’s a lot to take in. Hestia - a goddess, apparently, though she looks nine at the oldest - waits patiently in the fireplace for Leo to process it.

“I’m not allowed to stop myself from dying? Lots of things have come back to life this year.”

“When the doors were open, yes,” Hestia replies. “What you did is something only one other mortal has ever accomplished, and so the Olympians are torn. Should you be killed for upsetting the natural order of things, or should you be rewarded for putting the Earth Mother back to sleep?”

“Okay, so walk me through that whole thing,” Leo says, his mind reeling. “Like, how did this all happen? How did anyone even know I came back to life?”

“We all felt it when you came back,” Hestia says, mirroring Leo’s cross-legged position. “As if there was a… a disruption.”

Leo’s throat feels dry. “A disturbance in the force.”

“You could say that. Had you stayed on Ogygia longer, you may have been able to live on Earth without our interference. Unfortunately, you entered Zeus’ domain so immediately after the Earth Mother fell that he acted rashly, still on edge from the war.”

That’s definitely scary. Being on Zeus’ bad side may be all well and good for Percy Jackson, but Leo has got some self-preservation. He learned from a young age that pissing off the powerful people around you would only get you hurt, and that’s a mentality he hasn’t been able to kick yet.

“But you said they’re torn. Who’s torn? Who doesn’t want me dead?”

“Your father, obviously,” says Hestia.

“Not obvious at all, but I gotta say, it’s nice to hear. I’m guessing Apollo as well? Because if I get in trouble, so will he?”

Hestia is nodding before Leo is finished speaking. “That’s right. Your father and Apollo are both vehemently on your side, but I am afraid if it was only them campaigning for your life, you would already be dead.”

“Then why -” A lightbulb flicks on. “Hera.”

“Yes, she has been the one making the most progress on your case. She has persuaded some of the neutral parties to back her up, and Zeus cannot easily ignore or go against the will of his wife. You are lucky that the queen cares for you this way.”

Maybe Leo should feel some kind of gratitude, but he’s got a hollow spot inside him for Tía Callida. She was the first in a long line of adults who used and abused Leo, and to be told he is lucky for her attention makes him feel like shit. He imagines he’d have a lot to say about her in therapy.

He wants to say this isn’t fair. He wants to kick and scream. He wants to find a way out. But…

“I guess I am supposed to be dead,” he allows flatly. “But why can’t y’all just let me go now? If you could have left me alone if I hadn’t flown so soon, surely you can leave me alone now.”

“We cannot do that,” Hestia says, her expression full of sorrow. “This is not something Zeus _or_ Hades will compromise on. Now that you’re here, Leo, your life is in their hands. And you are lucky to be alive.”

“I’m not feeling very lucky. I don’t want to be alive if this room is all I get to see for the rest of my days.”

“I’m sorry, Leo,” says Hestia, and it sounds like she means it. “But you made your decision already. You chose to stay alive above all else. They are not going to ask your opinion on the matter.”

“Wait, I can’t decide to _die_?”

“Your life is no longer yours to do what you want with it. You made a choice.”

Leo hears what Hestia isn’t saying. It’s why he still has his defensive powers but hasn’t been given anything resembling a weapon. Not so he doesn’t attack a god, but so he doesn’t use it on himself. His stomach sinks. Barely out of a prophecy and his life is already back in Hera’s hands. Great.

 

* * *

 

There’s are two new notebooks on the hearth before Hestia leaves. Leo doesn’t even see her put them there.

He may not feel any gratitude to Hera, but he has a feeling that Hestia is helping him more than she’s supposed to. He burns some of his bacon in the fire and thanks her. It burns a little bit brighter.

 

* * *

 

Hestia shows up every twenty tallies after that, like clockwork. She keeps Leo company and updates him on his case. He doesn’t ask for news on his friends and Hestia never offers any. She does his hair for him in these absolutely tiny box braids that keep his hair tight and protected, and she redoes them every time she comes. It’s nice to have someone to talk to and it’s even nicer to finally have his hair under control, but it is impossible for Leo to forget that he’s being held captive here.

Luckily, Hestia is his only monthly visitor. He isn’t sure why at first, too concerned with everything else, and when it occurs to him he just figures that dying messed up his reproductive system. When he thinks to ask Hestia about it, though, she shakes her head.

“No, no, Dionysus gave you a blessing,” she says, dealing cards for another round of Go Fish. “It was agreed that you would not be tortured here. He remains neutral about your case, but he argued that it would be a form of torture to have you age and develop in a way that you would choose not to if you were on Earth.”

Leo doubts that Hestia knows what blockers or HRT even are, from the way she’s talking, because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Leo is too young and poor to have access to them.

There’s a swell of relief in Leo’s chest, but it’s not without its confusion and doubt. “What does wine have to do with me?”

“Perhaps it isn’t common knowledge among demigods,” Hestia hums, mostly to herself, “but Dionysus has lived and presented as many different genders over the course of time, and considers himself the patron of all things queer, besides.”

Queer has always been an easy shorthand for Leo to describe himself, but it rankles a bit for someone he barely knows to slap the label on him without asking. Whatever. He isn’t about to argue with the only person he ever sees, and Hestia might not even understand the complicated relationship mortals like Leo have with the word.

“It might be common knowledge,” he says instead of voicing the slight discomfort. “I was only at camp for a few months and Mr. D wasn’t even there.”

Hestia inclines her head in understanding. “Do you have any twos?”

And so it goes.

There are no mirrors in the room and Hestia never shows signs of aging, so Leo’s hair and nail growth are the only physical indicators of time passing. He keeps track of his sleeps as best as he can, takes care of his personal hygiene better than he ever did in life, and plays games with Hestia when she visits. All the while, anxiety is bubbling up in his gut and threatening to boil over. When it no longer feels like he can physically hold his emotions in anymore, Leo turns to the notebooks.

He starts planning projects for when he’s able to leave, calculations mostly a guess and reminders to check his work in the margins. The ideas get more and more outrageous as he’s left alone with his imagination. It starts to bother him that he has no idea how technology and science are advancing while he’s here. Sure, he could ask, but his curiosity never overpowers his desire to ignore his own feelings.

The possibility of a panic attack is high if he thinks too hard about life and humanity continuing without him, so. He doesn’t.

He gets very good at sketching the things he can see, perfecting the marble texture with his pen until he’s happy with it. The pen itself has proven to be magic in its own right, as it has never run out of ink. He tries sketching things from memory or dreams, but those are too muddied to be reliable.

In the hundreds upon hundreds of nights that Leo has been here, he hasn’t even had a demigod dream. It’s almost like his subconscious is locked up, too, and that’s kind of a relief. He doesn’t need to revisit old nightmares or learn new ones. There are reasons it sucks, too, but again - Leo can’t think about that for long. He doesn’t want to go actually insane here, on the small chance that he’ll be allowed to return to life.

Nothing ever seems to change with the gods’ debate, but Leo notices that his body slowly is. He thanks Dionysus at the fire every time he remembers to, because none of the changes make him uncomfortable in his own skin. Sure, it’s inherently uncomfortable to notice that he’s gotten taller or that there are premature strands of grey when he brushes out his braids to wash them, because those show the passage of time, but he isn’t dysphoric on top of all that. If Dionysus hadn’t had the presence of mind to allow Leo’s aging to be neutral, he imagines that he’d hate his body by now. He doesn’t like it much as it is.

Around the time Leo accepts that the odds of him leaving with his life are slim to none - that takes roughly a thousand tallies, give or take - he starts to write letters.

In school, Leo was never very good at English. His dyslexia and ADHD made concentrating on words a personal kind of hell. He was always careful with spelling on things his classmates would see, because kids saw his brown skin and Spanish surname and decided that being bad at grammar was reason to call him slurs or tell him to go back to his own country.

Never mind that Leo had never set foot in Mexico or that his spelling was no better in Spanish, that was the sort of thing he’d end up dealing with. It was always something with his classmates in the various Texas cities he’d lived in. If they weren’t outwardly racist, then they’d call him his dead name or say he was stupid or queer or, if they decided to look him up online, he might get called a murderer in science class.

Regardless, he doesn’t worry about things like spelling in these letters. Some are only outlets for his own emotions, like the many he writes to his mom in every language he knows. Some of them, though, he keeps folded in his pockets with the tally page in the hopes that Hestia or someone will deliver them when he’s dead, like the apology he’d written Frank for treating him horribly during the quest or the bucket list he dedicates to Calypso so that maybe she can cross some of it off for him.

There are two people he doesn’t write to. He wouldn’t know where to start.

Hestia is a nice, warm goddess, which is something Leo has never encountered before. She’s definitely the best aunt he’s ever had, including the human ones. She may look like a child but she’s wise and intuitive and answers Leo’s questions before he has the courage to ask them.

It’s Leo’s new normal. It’s fucking horrible and makes him want to personally fight every god who put him in this situation, but he never gets an option to leave and Hestia refuses to pass on his fuck-you messages to Zeus and Hera.

Leo would take death over this purgatory any day and, right before he goes to sleep for what’s closer to the two thousandth time than not, it comes for him.

 

* * *

 

And in those nights near the end, Leo starts to dream again.

He dreams of Piper. They are his only clear dreams since he got here, even with all the flickering. Piper on the roof, telling him he doesn’t smoke, that he’s not Jason, that this never happened. Piper in his arms, feeling warm and safe and sleepy as Leo slowly realised that these aren’t dreams at all.

It’s not like he’s an expert or anything, but Leo has been to therapy and he _knows_ what repressed memories are. He thinks about that a lot - how Jason and Percy had their memories slowly return to them, but how they had returned to a blank space. Leo and Piper had been given a scenario and memories to latch onto, even once they knew about the falsehoods.

Leo writes the dreams down, all his confusion over what they mean, and it’s like a dam has broken inside of him. Piper’s name is everywhere in his notebooks now; long, rambling things where he tries to figure out how deep these feelings ran. Interwoven, as she always was, with Jason’s name. One did not exist without the other until these dreams, after all, and there is no taking Jason out of the equation.

It’s a complicated equation, but it’s one that Leo has almost wrapped his head around and broken through, when the hearth slides sideways like a door and the god of the Underworld steps into his room.

 

* * *

 

“So, you’re here to kill me?”

Hades regards Leo with a cool, detached sort of fury. To Leo’s surprise, he shakes his head. “The decision is being reached as we speak. I’m here to bring you to the throne room.”

“You aren’t just gonna kill me and say I resisted arrest?” Leo jokes, suddenly hyperaware of his sweatpants next to Hades’ pinstriped suit.

“Tempting,” Hades says flatly. “But I’m not actually a monster.”

Leo is too in shock to laugh. He stands on shaky legs and shoves his small collection of notebooks and papers in the pockets of his sweats, heart pounding. As soon as Leo stands, Hades is stalking away. His legs are long and he doesn’t walk slow, so Leo has to do a little half jog to catch up to him. He has a billion questions, but they all die in his throat. He feels quite certain that he isn’t making it out of this alive, but that’s a relief at this point.

These halls are made of marble as well, empty of decoration or other people, but Leo still drinks in the change of scenery like this is the last thing he’ll ever see, because it might be.

They turn one last corner and there’s an open door at the end of it, a sight that nearly brings Leo to tears all on its own. He hears a voice echoing from the throne room, and it feels like he’s been doused in cold water.

“- will not keep repeating myself, mom. I know you’re stalling to try and wait out Leo’s mortal life, but I’m not just going back to Brooklyn and waiting for all of you to make -”

Leo breaks out into a run. His socked feet don’t make noise on the marble, so he hears Hades sigh behind him. A couple of the gods turn when Leo runs into the room and skids to a stop, but _she_ doesn’t see him yet. That’s for the best. It gives Leo a chance to take a few seconds and really drink her in.

This is not the teenager on the roof he’s been dreaming about. This is a woman with lines around her mouth and bags under her eyes, glaring up at a god’s throne as if she’s the one who is twelve feet tall. She’s still talking, passionate and angry and clearly bringing out the charmspeak. She has always been beautiful, that has never once been in question, but she is absolutely breathtaking in this moment.

“You’re arguing about the natural order of things,” says a new voice, too deep to be Jason’s, and Leo registers the man standing next to Piper for the first time. “Whether a death has to be permanent for it to count, right? I know a bit about that.”

It is _only_ the way anger looks on the man’s face, cold and dangerous, just like Hades, that makes his identity click. The voice, the broad shoulders, the tattoos overlaid down the neck and chest on display by a black v-neck - none of it is the Nico di Angelo that Leo remembers or could have ever predicted.

“You’re trying to tell us that a mortal death and a mortal rebirth is natural?” Demeter asks disbelievingly.

“No, but it isn’t the first time it’s been done. Explain why Hippolytes was allowed to live and Leo is not.”

Many of the gods turn to Artemis. She regards them with something bordering on understanding in her eyes and nods. “I did not allow him to be taken in the first place,” she says, her sympathetic gaze flickering to Leo. “Leo was vulnerable and took to sky, which made Zeus aware of him immediately. Now that he is here, it hasn’t been an easy decision to make.”

Nico’s eyes follow Artemis’ and land on Leo with no small amount of shock. They stare at each other, cataloguing the changes in each other, while Zeus joins the discussion. It’s all basically white noise to Leo at this point.

“The fact remains that the boy ought to be dead.”

“The _fact_ is that you all told a child he had to die in order to save all of you,” Piper retorts, her voice sharpened to a point like a dagger. Leo almost can’t believe she’s talking to the king of the gods like this. “You used him as a tool and you’re just angry that he outsmarted you.”

A small bolt of lightning strikes the floor in front of Piper. She doesn’t even flinch.

“Watch your tongue,” Zeus says, loud enough that Poseidon flinches.

“I will not,” Piper snaps, hands on her hips and chin in the air. “The _fact_ is that this trial would not even be taking place if you needed Leo for something.”

“You have no right -”

“That’s true,” Nico speaks up, finally turning away from Leo. “Thalia Grace. Percy Jackson. Hazel and myself. We have all upset the natural order of things in one way or another, and yet we have never received treatment like this in response to it. In fact, Thalia and Percy were both offered immortality.”

“I don’t want immortality.”

Everyone is looking at Leo now, which makes his anxiety spike. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Piper looks like she might buckle at the knees, or burst into tears, or throw herself in Leo’s direction, but Nico takes over for her.

“That’s fine, Leo, I don’t think that was on the table here,” says Nico. “Uncle, father, see sense. Leo, how long were you dead for?”

“I don’t remember,” Leo says honestly.

“An estimate is fine.”

“Okay, uh. Less than fifteen minutes, I think? Definitely not more than twenty.”

Nico smirks as if the argument has been won with that detail alone. “Tell me, father. How is that any different from Leo being brought back by modern medicine? My partner is in residency at Mount Sinai, and I know for a fact that mortals can be brought back to life several minutes after their hearts stop. Leo isn’t mortal. We don’t know how long a demigod heart could be stopped for, and I don’t exactly want to find out.”

“The children have a point,” Hera says, regarding Piper and Leo with vague pride. “Dear, you’ve made your point. Punish the boy, don’t kill him.”

Leo looks around the room to gauge the gods’ reactions. Most look tired of the argument, but more than a couple are nodding along. Leo’s dad gives him a rare smile, but Leo’s feeling too much stress to appreciate it.

“You have already punished him,” Piper says, appalled. “You kept him in solitary confinement for a decade! Any court system on the planet would rule that as _torture_.”

A decade. Leo’s count was way off, or time here really does run differently. He feels lightheaded.

“What sort of punishment would you propose?” Zeus asks, ignoring Piper.

“The same thing you did to your son last time this happened,” Nico says coolly, gesturing at Apollo. “It might have been a more complicated situation, but the end result was more or less the same. Since you left Hippolytes alone, it’s the only precedent for punishment that we have.”

There’s a whole lot of nodding. Leo doesn’t understand it all all, doesn’t know who the hell Hippolytes is, but it seems like Nico and Piper are winning. He holds his breath as he watches Hades approach his brothers and say something to them quietly. Even at half their size in his mortal form, Hades looks intimidating. For the first time since he started writing letters, Leo dares to hope.

Zeus sighs and he nods, too.

“You’re pardoned, Leo Valdez,” he says, waving an impatient hand as if Leo were a houseguest who overstayed their welcome. “You will be allowed to return with your friends, but you will be human.”

Barely believing his eyes and ears, Leo shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

“You will be human, you will continue to be mortal, and that is your punishment,” says Zeus. That doesn’t make things any clearer. “You may go now.”

Leo is still confused, still lightheaded, but Piper has launched herself at him and enveloped him in a tight hug. She’s crying and apologizing over and over even though she’s here, she saved him, she has no reason to -

Then there is the sound of thunder and everything goes dark.

 

* * *

 

“He’s a little underweight. I don’t think they knew how to feed a young guy nutritiously. His reflexes and vitals are fine. Physically, he’s in good shape.”

Leo is awake, but he keeps his eyes closed. Something inside of him is wrong, and he can’t figure it out. He’s lying on what feels like a comfortable bed, a warm hand in his own and another doing things like hitting his knee with a small object. Piper and a doctor, he thinks. Nico is probably skulking around somewhere.

But why is the doctor saying he’s fine when he so clearly is not? He can’t put his finger on it, but there’s a hollow spot in his core. It’s not from trauma - it feels physical, like his soul has been ripped from his very body and left him empty. There is something very real missing, and he doesn’t know what it could possibly be. There’s something else missing, someone who has always been able to see through Leo’s defenses and get to the root of any emotions he tries hiding or doesn’t know exist.

“Jason?” he asks, keeping his eyes closed. It comes out as a whisper, which is embarrassing.

Piper squeezes his hand. “No, honey, he’s not here right now. We’ll let him know you’re here and safe when we know more about how you’re feeling.”

That gets Leo’s eyes open. His vision is a little blurry, but Piper is as beautiful as he remembers from Olympus. She looks tired and guilty instead of furious, and he doesn’t like that at all.

“I don’t know how I feel,” he says. “Jason will know.”

“He’s not wrong,” Nico snorts, somewhere to his left. “We should have told Jason before we even went to Olympus.”

“And then what, Nico?” Piper asks, tired. “We come back and say, ‘sorry, Jay, it turns out you were right all along but we pushed them to a decision and they chose to kill him’? We had way less than a fifty-fifty chance of getting him out of there.”

“He deserved to know the moment we did. If you stopped trying to manipulate the people around you for a goddamn second, you would -”

“Leo,” the doctor’s voice interrupts, warm and nonthreatening. Leo looks over and is startled by vague recognition. This is the same demigod who showed him around camp when he first got there. Will, or Bill, or something. It’s a comfort - Leo is overwhelmed and doesn’t want more fighting. He wants Jason. Will-or-Bill gives him a smile. “Hey there. Welcome back. I bet you have a lot of questions, but would you like to wash up?”

All things considered, Leo is pretty clean. He thinks that Bill-or-Will is trying to give him a moment alone, and he’s glad to take it. He nods and lets go of Piper’s hand to push himself up from the bed. It looks like he’s in a bedroom and not a hospital, which is a good sign. Nico helpfully points to an open door, his scowl lessening in concern.

Leo doesn’t like the look on Piper’s face at all. There’s too much guilt there for him to deal with, so he avoids her eye as he heads into the ensuite. It’s a weird feeling to be closing a door after all this time.

The colours and textures in the bathroom throw Leo off balance for a moment. Like, it looks perfectly normal, but the black tile and duck-patterned shower curtain are so foreign to him after nothing, nothing, nothing but white marble. Leo sighs and reaches for the silver faucet when his whole body freezes.

Leo’s memory has never been all that great, which he blames on the ADHD, but his mother’s face has never left him and now he’s looking right at it. No - not his mother, although the resemblance is undeniable. His mom’s hair would never have been long enough to put in box braids and up in a loose bun. Her eyelashes were longer and her chin was rounder, but otherwise it looks just like her.

Leo blinks, and so does his reflection. When he was younger, he never thought he would make it this far. He didn’t have a specific age in mind or anything, just a strong gut feeling that he was going to die young. He never expected to see himself at his mother’s age, not long before she died, and his heart is pounding at the sight.

The blessing from Dionysus didn’t act like a form of transitioning - Leo’s thick hair hasn’t translated to more than peach fuzz on his chin and lip, for example - but moreso seems to have put Leo’s presentation on hold. He looks older, but not necessarily more masculine or more feminine. It isn’t how he would have chosen to look in his twenties if he ever expected to make it here. Leo isn’t interested in looking androgynous, he wants to be unmistakably a guy. He didn’t have any control in the matter. Especially…

Leo’s eyes land on the clippers and electric razor next to the sink. Half of Nico’s head is shaved, so this is probably his place. Or maybe it isn’t. Leo doesn’t know anything about this world.

With a lump in his throat, Leo picks the clippers up. The snipping noise, the braids falling into the sink, the dark eyes watching him in the mirror with fear and pride. It all feels like he’s back in Houston, watching his mom get ready to face a world that never treated her right.

In his whole life, Leo has never felt closer to his mother than he does right now. It’s something familiar to cling to in a world that he suspects has moved on without him.


	3. JASON III: the checkered flag we all expected

Today, Jason gets out of bed.

It’s more than he was able to manage yesterday, but it’s unfortunately all he can manage now. He gets tired somewhere between his bed and the fridge and just sits down on the stairs, trying to get that burst of energy back.

He’s not in amazing shape anymore, sure, but this isn’t physical. He doesn’t know why it happens, why it’s so debilitating if it only has root in his mind, why it won’t go away.

Normally, Piper can coax him out of this. When he’s shut off from everything, she has no chance of reaching him, but when he’s just like this, just so _tired_ that he can’t make himself function, her voice can always bring him to his feet again. Piper isn’t home, though. She hasn’t been for a few days, and Jason has no idea where she is. That isn’t unusual, since Jason isn’t always paying attention when she talks about travelling, but it always sucks. Maybe he has missed texts. He’d left his phone in the kitchen the last time he was out of bed. 

Jason can’t even remember how long it’s been. Of course, he doesn’t literally stay in bed for days on end, but going to his ensuite bathroom or grabbing granola bars from his under-the-bed pantry are way easier than going further, going downstairs, going outside.

He wonders how much longer Piper is going to be gone. He relies on her when he has bad days.

Jason leans against the wall beside his chosen step and closes his eyes, waiting for Piper or for internal motivation to move. He dozes a bit even though he’s gotten more than enough sleep recently. He is just so tired, more often than not. He wakes to the sounds of the front door opening and Piper’s voice drifting up the stairs to him.

“He’s probably upstairs. Make yourself comfortable.”

Idly, Jason wonders who she’s talking to. Piper appears at the bottom of this flight of stairs, looking haggard and exhausted like she hasn’t slept for days. She manages a smile for him, though.

“Hey, Jay,” she says, her words curling around Jason like an embrace. “There’s someone here who wants to see you. Come downstairs?”

It’s not a question, really, Piper’s beautiful voice pulling Jason to his feet when he cannot do so himself. He’s grateful for that. He takes the stairs slowly, one of his feet asleep, and meets Piper at the bottom. Up close, she looks even worse. There’s something sad and guilty in her eyes that Jason doesn’t like, never mind the slumped shoulders and tense set of her mouth. She smiles, but it doesn’t really seem forced, just tired.

“He’s in the living room,” she says softly, patting Jason’s arm. “I have to get my stuff together.”

“Stuff?” Jason asks, his voice croaky from lack of use.

“I’m supposed to be in California already.”

She starts up the stairs then and Jason’s questions die in his throat. He’ll ask about her absence later, not sure where she was if she wasn’t in Los Angeles. She looks like she needs some serious rest, which is probably why Jason is being expected to entertain her guest. Maybe that will help his own mood, having someone to chat with and act normal for. Jason feels like he’s in a dreamlike trance as he enters the living room, not completely on his own volition as the movement is.

There’s a guy looking at their bookshelves, his back to Jason. He’s around the same height as Piper but much thinner, a band hoodie that Nico wears often in winter hanging off his frame. His hair is buzzed short, barely anything left, which makes the pointed tips of his ears stand out more.

It’s that small detail that gets Jason to stop in his tracks. There are a lot of people with ears that point instead of curve, he scolds his hopeful heart. It pounds anyway, like Jason is running the New York Marathon, and he’ll swear later that it stops completely when the guy senses his presence and turns around. Certainly, the breath leaves Jason’s chest and leaves him gawping.

“Hi,” Leo says, his voice small but familiar, so achingly familiar. “Piper tried calling, but - yeah. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

This is so much like a dream. Jason blinks and presses two fingers to his own arm to zap himself with not a small amount of electricity. He doesn’t wake up.

“Ow,” he says, feeling far away and disconnected from his own voice.

Leo laughs. A hand flies to his mouth immediately after the noise as if he can’t believe it came from him.

“That was dumb,” Leo says, smiling.

Jason takes three steps forward and wraps his arms around Leo, hugging him close. He’s here. He’s real and he’s _here._ One of them is shaking, or maybe they both are, and Leo takes these big gulps of air as he sinks into the embrace and his arms curl around Jason’s middle.

“I knew it,” Jason whispers. “I knew you weren’t dead. I missed you so _much_.”

“I didn’t miss you at all, Superman.” Leo says it in the cadence of a joke, but his voice is too wobbly and raw to sell it as humour.

“Everyone thought you were dead,” says Jason. “They kept telling me to give up, it was so long ago, you would have come back by now if you weren’t. But I knew it, I knew you were smart enough to get out of it. Unless I’m having an actual mental breakdown and you’re not really here.”

Leo laughs again, a watery sound that Jason never could have imagined coming from his best friend. “I’m real. No need to electrocute yourself again. Or me, for that matter.”

Jason drops a kiss to the top of Leo’s buzzed head, too happy and relieved to care if it’s a weird thing to do. Leo snorts. There’s something that nudges at Jason’s memory, waiting for him to acknowledge it. It takes a couple of seconds for him to connect the dots because - well. His entire life is being turned upside down for the better right now.

“Hey, didn’t it used to, like,” Jason struggles to find the word, “spark, like, when I hugged you?”

“Yeah,” Leo sighs, resting his cheek on Jason’s chest comfortably. He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere in the near future. “I think I’m human now. It wasn’t really explained super well, and I don’t understand everything that happened, but I’m pretty sure all my powers are gone.”

That kinda sucks, but Jason would be lying if he said the news didn’t thrill him. Leo is home without any prophecies or monsters attached to him? That’s an ideal world.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jason offers gently. “Any of it? Or would you rather just take a tour of your new home?”

Very technically, Leo hasn’t said that he’s staying here. Jason is not about to let him go far, though, and Leo pulls back enough to smile up at him with so much gratitude that Jason doesn’t feel bad for assuming. “Tour sounds great, thanks. I’ll tell you about it all later, when I’ve wrapped my own head around it.”

It takes another couple of minutes for either of them to let go. Hugging Leo just makes Jason feel calmer than he thinks he’s ever felt. Eventually, Leo steps back and gestures at the bookshelves.

“So, your name is on some of these. Let’s talk about that now.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jason shrugs, feeling himself smile at Leo’s typical avoidance technique. “I started writing down quests and stories from the camps to kind of compare and contrast and see what was most important to the demigods at both camps, right? Because I was in charge of making sure nobody killed each other, and I figured it would be best to find some common grounds for more stubborn campers. Anyway, Frank read them and begged me to let him publish them as young adult paperback fantasy since he was having a slow quarter. They’re not super popular, but it’s as good a job as any.”

“Huh,” Leo says, looking like he’s trying to process all that information at once. After a moment, he nods. “I’ll have to read ‘em, now that my dyslexia is magically cured.”

“It is?”

“Seems to be. Still got ADHD, though. Not convinced that one’s a demigod thing.” Leo continues looking at the books, and Jason wonders what he’s seeing there that Jason is used to at this point. “Lots of kid books. Did Piper forget to tell me I’m an uncle?”

Jason smiles. “Kids are here sometimes, but none of them live here. Percy’s sister and twins come around when they or Sally need a break, and we’re a safe house for any travelling demigods. So we’ve got stuff for a wide age range in English and we’ve also got Greek and Latin translations. Some of it is educational, but most is just fun. Too many young demigods get frustrated by reading.”

Something that people always overlooked about Leo was his intelligence, which Leo would take advantage of and downplay so he wasn’t singled out. Jason doesn’t want to overwhelm Leo with information, but he doesn’t need to. Leo is fully capable of connecting dots.

“The translations… that’s part of what Frank is doing, right? He’s publishing so all you dyslexic demigods can enjoy stories you couldn’t before?”

“You got it.”

“Huh,” Leo says again. He turns away from the shelves. “Alright, show me around.”

The brownstone is big and feels even bigger because Jason and Piper don’t have a designer bone in their bodies. There aren’t really decorative objects or knick knacks or, like, rugs, because neither of them _like_ shopping. The only things on the walls downstairs are drawings from the kids. He isn’t surprised when Leo looks aghast at the state of their fridge.

“Did you guys just move in or something?” he asks upon reaching the basement and seeing the undecorated guest rooms. One is set up for adults with a queen bed and the other has two bunks, but Jason knows what he means - the beds are basically the only things in each room. At least the adult’s room has a door that opens to their admittedly-sparse backyard, giving it more light than the kids’ room at the front of the house.

“No, we’re just bad at this,” Jason admits, sheepish. “We’ve been here for maybe seven years now.”

“Even my prison cell had a plant,” Leo jokes, except for how he isn’t joking at all. Jason doesn’t want to push, but that’s a pretty worrying statement.

“You were in prison?”

Leo immediately looks uncomfortable. “Kind of. I was in prison on Olympus, so I’m sure it was nicer than state penitentiaries.” 

Olympus. So Jason’s dad was the one responsible for Leo being gone ten years. Jason has no idea why, but he’s not about to press Leo for more information when he just got here. He’ll kick his dad’s ass on his own time.

“Our offices aren’t much better, honestly, but at least my room is cozy. You wanna check that out instead?”

“Sure,” Leo says, obviously grateful for the topic changing. “Isn’t Piper packing, though? I don’t want to bug her.”

Oh, okay. Piper hasn’t told Leo anything. Resigned to his duty as the bearer of weird news, Jason just shakes his head. “We won’t bother her. She’s getting ready in her room, that’s where her stuff is.”

Leo blinks. “You have separate rooms? Is that a rich person thing?”

“No, that’s a roommate thing. Piper and I aren’t together.”

It’s old news at this point, something Jason has repeated enough that he ought to be numb to it, but he still feels a longing pang whenever it comes up.

“What happened?” Leo asks, somehow looking more lost than Jason feels. 

Jason has rote answers that he gives when people ask. We just grew apart. We’re better as friends. It’s complicated. But this isn’t just anyone, this is Leo, their best friend in the world no matter how long they were apart. So Jason sighs and sits down on one of the bottom bunks. Leo hesitates before sitting next to him, their arms pressed together. Jason is thankful for it, the warmth of Leo’s body noticeable even without the fire inside him.

“Well, we’ve broken up over a few things over the years,” he says slowly. “Always mutual. Always temporary. This is the longest we’ve ever been separated for, and it’s kind of scary to think this one might last.”

“You guys seemed happy,” says Leo. “It doesn’t feel like ten years to me, though. I guess a lot can change.”

“It can,” Jason agrees. “I’ll get you caught up on everything I can.”

The real reason they broke up isn’t something that Jason wants to say out loud, least of all to Leo. Their disagreement over Leo’s disappearance and the hole in their lives where he should have been are too raw to talk about. Besides, it would sound like they’ve got nothing holding them back with Leo here, which isn’t true at all.

Leo waits patiently for Jason to gather his thoughts, looking around the depressing room as if cataloguing all the things that should be there. Jason is happy to let someone else take over the feat of making their house more comfortable, if Leo is up to the task.

“We didn’t want to get married,” Jason says, slowly. “And when we realised that, we realised there wasn’t really any good reason to be together at all. Not that you can’t be together without getting married, of course that’s not what I’m saying, it just - we weren’t going anywhere. We were just going to keep breaking up and getting back together and making our friends uncomfortable and that - it wasn’t a sustainable way to live, you know? We couldn’t keep doing that to each other, to ourselves.”

“Tell me if I’m off base here,” Leo turns his whole upper body to look at Jason. The warmth of his arm disappears. “But it sounds like you still love her.”

The word makes Jason flinch. That’s definitely not a reaction he wants to explain to Leo, so he just nods.

“I don’t think it’s _possible_ to stop loving a child of Aphrodite.”

For some reason, Leo looks stricken. “You’re not serious?”

“I am. It’s a rite of passage at Half-Blood to break someone’s heart, and there’s a similar thing at Jupiter where Venus descendants compete to see who can get more mortals to fall in love with them. Love, to them, it’s just a game. Lots of them use it as a weapon, too.”

“There’s no way Piper is like that,” Leo says, but there’s a smidge of doubt in his face. Jason is surprised by how much more open Leo’s expressions are now - Jason used to need to look a lot harder to see past whatever face Leo was putting on for the world.

“No, no, Piper never treated me that way,” Jason assumes him. “Just saying that, yeah. I probably will never stop loving her. It’s the same way most people, even after their hearts get broken, are still in love with any of Piper’s siblings or Venus’ descendants - I really, honestly, don’t believe the goddess of love would have made it possible for someone to fall out of love with her or anyone like her. It’s been nearly thirty years and Tristan is still broken up about her.”

Leo clearly has more questions, and Jason is willing to answer whatever they are, but Leo doesn’t voice them. He nudges Jason gently with his elbow. “So we’ll all be roommates. Like Three’s Company. That’s not so bad.”

That brings a smile to Jason’s lips. “Especially with Brooklyn real estate prices.”

“Yeah, Manhattan, too,” Leo grins. “Even di Angelo has a roommate, and I was pretty sure that guy was allergic to human connection.”

“Roommate?” Jason frowns, confused.

“Uh huh. Will something or other. I’m pretty sure he’s Apollo’s kid? I’ve met him at camp, but camp’s a bit fuckin’ fuzzy. He gave me di Angelo’s sweater and acted like he lived there, too. Does he not?”

Jason laughs. “Oh, Will is Nico’s boyfriend.”

This is old news, too, but Leo looks shocked and then, after a moment’s thought, contemplative.

“I didn’t know he was... gay,” Leo says, looking at Jason questioningly. Jason nods. No interest in women at all in that household. “Probably good that I didn’t, or he’d have been another in a long line of hopeless crushes that didn’t like me and also, could beat me up.”

Gods, it’s so easy to picture. Jason struggles not to laugh at the mental image. “You really do have a type.”

Leo squints at him. “Piper told you, huh?”

“No, I’m just not all that surprised,” Jason admits. Leo looks a bit nervous at that, so he clarifies. “Not that you’re - obvious, or whatever. I can just count our straight friends on one hand.”

“Oh, really?” Leo grins, like he thinks Jason might be exaggerating.

“Yes, really,” Jason says, counting off on his fingers. “A couple we keep in touch with from Piper’s high school, Hazel, and myself.”

Still grinning, Leo shakes his head. “That can’t be true. What are the odds of that?”

“I don’t know the odds, dude. Annabeth says it’s just something that happens. She says queer people tend to gravitate together before they even know they’re queer, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”

“You think Annabeth is wrong? Brave man.”

“Well, no,” Jason chuckles. “She’s definitely right, I just think there’s something else to it. I’ve done a lot of research on the camps, and the ratio of straight people to not-straight people - it’s skewed across both camps, it doesn’t look anything like mortal statistics. It makes sense when you look deeper. Achilles, Nero, our own parents…”

“What you’re saying,” Leo teases, a relaxed set to his shoulders that Jason can only imagine comes from the knowledge of not being alone, “is that you and Hazel are the weird ones.”

“Yeah, I guess we are.”

Leo laughs and stands up. “Alright, let’s go see your room. No homo.”

“I already regret telling you all that,” Jason sighs, but he can’t fight the smile off his face. He lets Leo lead the way up to the third floor.

\--

It isn’t until much later, when Piper has left with a rushed goodbye and they’re making their way through a large pizza together, that Leo explains anything at all. He seems confused by parts of it himself, and he doesn’t know how Piper and Nico found him, but Jason gets the gist of it all. 

“If I had known,” Jason starts, but he cuts himself off. He didn’t know. He didn’t figure any of it out. He wasn’t even there to rescue Leo at the end of it all. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Leo says, almost pleading. “You know I hate to dwell on shit. Piper keeps looking at me like she personally locked me up, and I can’t deal with that at all. I need someone to just - act like it’s fine.”

Jason reaches for Leo and tangles their fingers together in a show of comfort. It doesn’t seem to be very appreciated, but Leo doesn’t pull his hand away.

“Piper thought you were gone for good,” says Jason. “She’s probably kicking herself for not trying harder.”

“Well, I wish she wouldn’t. I’d still be there if it wasn’t for her, and she doesn’t seem to even… Nico, too, he helped a lot. How serious is this boyfriend of his?”

Jason can’t believe how similar Leo is to his teenage self sometimes. Dodging things with bad jokes, his shaking hand in Jason’s the only indicator that he’s upset. He supposes that Leo didn’t have a lot of opportunity for growth, locked up the way he was. Maybe he’ll learn to be more open, at least with Jason, given enough time and comfort. Jason lets go of Leo’s hand and tries not to be hurt when Leo looks relieved.

“Pretty serious. They’ve been together since the war ended.”

Leo snaps his fingers in mock disappointment. “And what was I doing? Dying? Guess the early bird gets the worm.” At the look on Jason’s face, he changes the subject. “Hey, does anyone else have babies? You said Percy and Annabeth have kids, but what does everyone else’s family look like?”

“Reyna has a stepkid,” Jason hums, reaching for another slice of pizza, “but most of us just take in demigods temporarily. I still think we’re a little young for all that.”

“My mom died before her thirtieth birthday,” says Leo. “We aren’t that young.”

Well, that’s a sad and terrifying perspective. Jason doesn’t know information like that about his mom, but he has heard that she was young when she had Thalia. He thinks he knows what’s bothering Leo.

“We’re only twenty-five,” Jason says. “Piper is barely twenty-six. Hazel is still in college. Our lives are nowhere near over, despite what Chiron would have us believe. I know it feels like maybe you missed everything, but you’ll catch up. Most people our age don’t know a damn thing about the world - you’re not alone in that.”

“I guess I just don’t know where I fit in this world,” Leo says, the somber voice he uses when he’s thinking about his mom.

“You fit here,” says Jason. “You fit with us.”

Leo gives him a small smile and turns up the tv volume, a clear end to the conversation. 

He isn’t just saying that to make Leo feel better. For the past ten years, give or take a few months, there has been an unbreachable rift between Jason and Piper with Leo’s name on it. The why of it is complicated, but there is no doubt that it exists. This is where Leo belongs.

\--

It is so hard for Jason to sleep that night. Leo is just down the hall, set up in Piper’s barely-used bedroom, but Jason keeps getting spikes of paranoia that it’s not real, or that Leo will leave, so he’s doing a lot of tossing and turning. His door is open in case Leo needs anything, but every tiny creak of the old brownstone is keeping him up. 

Jason is about to give up on sleep entirely when he hears the telltale padding of socked steps coming down the hall. He props himself up on an elbow, watching as Leo appears in the doorframe. The soft light from the hallway illuminates his small silhouette.

“Hey,” Leo says, shifting restlessly.

“Hi. You wanna sleep in here?” Jason asks, already pulling the covers back.

Leo takes the invitation without bothering to verbalize it, coming closer and burrowing himself under the blankets. It’s a big bed, and Leo stays on the other side of it, but it still calms Jason to have him close.

“I didn’t wanna be alone,” Leo mumbles into his chosen pillow.

“I don’t like being alone either.”

That’s the end of it, but Jason stays awake until Leo’s breathing evens out and then he, too, closes his eyes.

\--

Today, Jason gets out of bed. He doesn’t even need to force himself. He waits for a couple of minutes to see if the crushing weight drops on his chest again, but it doesn’t. It’s a good day. He stretches out and then thinks to check that he isn’t about to hit Leo in the face. Not a danger - Leo isn’t even there. That makes Jason’s anxiety spike, but not by a lot, since he can hear music from downstairs and he’s pretty sure Piper isn’t home yet. Jason uses his good days for things that he can’t bring himself to do every day, so he takes half an hour to shower and shave before he goes downstairs to find Leo.

He follows the music and finds Leo in the kitchen. The blinds are open and the wooden floors look shinier, giving a warmer feel to the whole room. The radio is blasting a top 40s station on the counter and Leo is mostly inside of the pantry. Jason turns the music down a couple notches so he doesn’t surprise Leo by coming up behind him. 

“If you’re looking for something to eat, there’s pancake mix on the top shelf.”

“Yeah, I’ll make us some in a bit.” Leo comes out of the pantry holding two cans of preserved peaches. “You’re aware that non-perishables have shelf lives too, right?”

It’s still a small shock to see Leo visibly older when Jason’s been thinking of him as fifteen forever. More surprising, though, is what he’s wearing.

“Are those my clothes?” Jason asks, ignoring Leo’s rhetorical question.

Leo looks down at himself. The sweats are tied tight and rolled up so Leo doesn’t step on them and the shirt hangs off him, showing off a good amount of collarbone. “Yeah. Not like I’ve got anything to my name, dude.”

He looks so small that Jason has to shake his head to try and clear a protective instinct from rising in him. “That’s fine. I’d think Piper’s stuff would fit better, though?”

“Maybe.” Leo shrugs and tosses the cans in the trash. “I’m not a fan of wearing girls’ clothes if I have a choice.”

Oh, right. Jason feels dumb for forgetting. “We should go get you some clothes today. If you wanna stop for groceries, we can do that too.”

“Really?” Leo perks up. “Hell yeah, let’s go outside!”

Jason hasn’t actually left the house in a couple of weeks, but he doesn’t want to be the one responsible for keeping Leo cooped up. He knows that Leo can just leave on his own, but he wouldn’t want to be alone in an unfamiliar city that progressed for a decade without him, either.

“Let me get my wallet,” Jason laughs, entertained by Leo’s energy. “And I’ll order an Uber.”

On his way out of the kitchen, Jason hears Leo call out, “What’s an Uber?”

It’s unseasonably chilly for late June, so Jason grabs an extra jacket to drape over Leo’s shoulders. It dwarfs him, and Jason’s got to fight down that protective instinct again as they wait on the curb.

Leo isn’t all that impressed to learn what an Uber is. He mutters, “So we’re gentrifying taxis now?” as he climbs into the backseat with Jason. It’s a newer model, though, so Leo quickly abandons his grumbling to ask the driver a million questions about his car. He’s particularly fascinated by the reverse camera. Jason doesn’t want to know how he’s react to a Tesla. Their driver is happy to chat with him and doesn’t ask if Leo has been living under a rock, so Jason makes a note to give her a tip. 

He tunes the conversation out to respond to the texts and emails that have been piling up from his streak of bad days. The most recent is from Piper, who says she’s going to spend some time with her dad while she’s in Los Angeles. Jason wishes she wouldn’t run from Leo after so many years without him, but he’s not going to try and tell her she’s reacting badly. Besides, Tristan tends to call Jason after too much radio silence from his daughter, and those conversations are some of the most awkward that Jason has to endure. He just asks Piper if she wants updates on Leo while she’s gone.

Everything is else is easy enough to respond to - no, Frank, he isn’t finished writing and yes, Annabeth, he can watch the kids this weekend - but it gives him something to do with his hands for the drive instead of continuously reaching for Leo.

Jason has never been shopping with Leo, discounting the Medea fiasco, and he isn’t sure what to expect. He thinks that Leo is just going to grab anything in his size and bounce as soon as possible, but that isn’t what he does at all. He’s pretty quick about grabbing some unopened multi-packs of boxers and socks that look like they came from a Jersey Walmart and are getting sold for double the original price in a Brooklyn thrift store, but after that he is so picky and indecisive that Jason regrets not eating breakfast first.

He doesn’t understand what Leo’s issue is until Leo is holding up two brightly-coloured plaid shirts like he can’t decide between them. Then it clicks.

“You know you’re here to get a whole wardrobe, right?” Jason asks dryly. “Not just one or two outfits. You can get both of those.”

“I don’t want you spending a bunch of money on me,” says Leo. He still puts both shirts in the provided basket, though, a bit sheepish.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” says Jason, “but Piper and I own a six bedroom home in Brooklyn. I think I can spare a couple hundred to make sure you have enough clothes to wear.”

That speeds up the process, but Leo still hems and haws over simple pieces of clothing. Jason starts grabbing every XS t-shirt off the racks so that he isn’t just twiddling his thumbs. Leo rolls his eyes, but doesn’t stop him. There’s no such thing as too many t-shirts.

The whole trip takes longer than Jason bargained for, so he insists on stopping at a corner coffee shop before they go to the grocery. He’s happier with a bagel in him, and he makes Leo try an everything bagel of his own. Leo eats slowly and can’t finish it, but he agrees that it is an incredible bagel.

As weird as he was about shopping for clothes, Leo loves grocery shopping. He plans meals out loud, grabbing stuff that he needs for them. It’s very different from Jason and Piper’s usual ‘uh, I don’t know, fruit looks good’ approach. Jason doesn’t have the heart to remind him that they’ve only got four hands between them, because Leo looks so in his element here. He resigns himself to making multiple trips from the return Uber and dutifully pushes the steadily-filling cart through every aisle. As long as Leo is happy, Jason thinks he can handle anything.

\--

The days bleed into each other with still no word from Piper. Jason isn’t worried, exactly, but he’s frustrated. Leo being back is such a great thing, bordering on miraculous, and she’s acting like it’s an inconvenience at best.

It doesn’t help that Jason relies on her for basic functioning when he’s having a bad day. He’s lucky right now, having Leo to focus on and then the twins to take care of for a weekend helps keep his mind occupied, but it’s only a matter of time. His mind isn’t stable, and he’s not equipped to add someone else’s trauma to his plate. Not without some kind of help.

Leo starts having nightmares, which he apparently didn’t experience in Olympus. That sucks for both of them. He sleeps in Jason’s bed every night and wakes them both up shouting half the time. Leo tries to apologise and offers to sleep elsewhere, but Jason isn’t having it. It makes sense to him that Leo has a lot of things to haunt him, especially after so long of his dreams being suppressed, but he doesn’t know how to _help_.

When Percy comes to drop the kids off, they murmur, “There’s a rumour going around that you’re losing it, seeing dead people. Wanna let me in and prove it wrong?”

But Leo doesn’t want to see them. Just seeing the twins fucks Leo up more than he’d ever admit, Jason can tell. He’s fine interacting with them, but he keeps staring and zoning out strongly. They’re a visual representation of the time that’s passed and how much things have changed, and for days after they leave Leo acts so weird. He doesn’t seem to want to see anyone that isn’t Jason. Jason tries anyway, he asks if Leo wants to speak with Frank whenever he calls or if he wants to go to camp for the day, but the answer is always no.

That is, until -

“Nico wants to come get the sweater he loaned you,” Jason tells Leo without looking up from his phone. “You wanna have him over for dinner?”

Leo hesitates long enough that Jason glances up to make sure Leo heard him. After chewing on his lip for a couple seconds, he nods. “Sure, but only if Will comes, too.”

“Really?” Jason asks, unable to hide his surprise.

Leo gives him a sheepish smile from the other side of the bed. “They’ve seen me already, they know the score.”

“You’ll have to see the others eventually,” Jason says gently. “If only so they don’t keep thinking I’ve had some kind of psychotic break. Annabeth has been talking about strong-arming me into therapy.”

“I know, I’m just adjusting first,” says Leo. “It’s gonna suck having everyone feel sorry for me.”

“They’re not. They’re just going to be happy you’re here.”

Another smile, softer this time. “Maybe. Not everyone gets me like you do.”

It doesn’t feel like Jason gets Leo at all, he’s so in over his head. The next day, he sees Leo secretively transferring ripped-out notebook pages from the pockets of Nico’s hoodie to a Nike box in Jason’s closet. It takes everything in Jason not to peek at what they could be. He’s very, very tempted, but he just pretends he’s still asleep and scolds himself for wanting to be a snoop. If Leo continues with the trend of not talking to Jason about his feelings and isolating himself, then maybe he’ll consider it. For now, Jason will just get out of bed.

\--

“You’re a doctor, right?”

Will blinks. They haven’t even finished exchanging pleasantries, but Jason can only shrug when Will gives him a confused look. He’s got no idea why Leo wants a doctor.

“Technically, yep,” Will says, taking the abrupt question in stride. “I’m in residency.”

Leo’s eyes are gleaming. Jason knows that look and he isn’t sure he likes it - it means Leo is about to figure out the final piece of a problem and create something innovative and dangerous. It’s been years since he’s seen it, but it still makes him wary to this day.

“Awesome,” is what Leo says out loud. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen?”

Another confused look. Another shrug.

“Okay,” Will agrees easily enough, following Leo to the kitchen. Jason sits on the sofa and flips through tv channels so he doesn’t accidentally eavesdrop. Nico comes out of the bathroom soon after and joins Jason, tucking his feet up under him.

“How’s he adjusting?” Nico asks quietly.

“To the world? Fine.” Jason settles on some crime drama he can easily tune out. “Like, he’s taking to new tech really well and he likes checking out the neighbourhood with me, but… I don’t know. I don’t think he’s coping. He hides whenever Percy’s here.”

“Very relatable,” Nico deadpans. “I’m not surprised he’s good with inventions and bad with people - that’s what he’s always been like. Plus, he was alone for a long time.”

“I know that you’re right,” Jason says with a sigh. “But it still worries me. Especially since I’m the only person he talks to.

That makes Nico frown. “Where’s Piper?”

“She’s in LA. You didn’t realize she’s not here?”

“Honestly, I thought she was avoiding me,” Nico admits.

“Join the club,” Jason mutters. “I know she feels guilty about leaving Leo there, or believing he was dead, or whatever, but I thought she would want to spend time with him.”

Nico frowns deeper, pushing his unstyled fringe off his forehead. “She hasn’t been here at all, has she?”

Jason shakes his head. He has no idea if this week would have been easier with Piper here, but he knows that she should be here regardless. She should be hovering around Leo until he gets annoyed and helping Jason calm him down from nightmares. Leo is _theirs_ , he isn’t only Jason’s responsibility. Piper shouldn’t be allowed to drop him and run, it isn’t fair to any of them. The look on Nico’s face says he’s probably thinking along the same lines, but he doesn’t voice his thoughts.

They watch the show in silence, waiting for Leo to finish dinner or release Will from whatever interrogation they’re having, and Jason lets his mind wander back to Piper.

She hasn’t been answering his update texts, and it’s frustrating. It’s also starting to worry him a bit, the way any demigod worries when one of them drops off the map. Jason decides to text Tristan while he’s thinking about it, just asking how his week with Piper has been, so that he doesn’t keep blowing up Piper’s phone.

“I wonder what they’re doing in there,” Nico says after the killer is revealed to be the husband. “They’re missing groundbreaking television.”

“I dunno, they bonded somehow,” says Jason. “Leo didn’t even want you here unless you brought Will.”

“I would be offended, but I also like Will more than I like me.”

“I like you more.”

“You don’t count. You’re like my mom.”

Jason grins and elbows Nico in the side. He’s always secretly thrilled when Nico lets his guard down and makes a joke, no matter how long he’s been comfortable in his own skin for. Nico punches his arm in retaliation. 

“Ow,” Jason laughs and rubs the sore spot. He’s pretty sure Nico still doesn’t know his own strength. “Show your mother some respect.”

They kind of shove at each other a bit more and Jason is about to put Nico in a headlock when Leo appears in the archway. “Dinner’s ready, stop roughhousing.”

Nico is all too happy to oblige, hopping to his feet and sliding past Leo to the dining room. 

Leo stays where he is, smiling in a fond sort of way at Jason. He looks happier, more relaxed, after his talk with Will. There’s a sense of relief in the set of his skinny shoulders, and Jason feels a spark of irritation - he hasn’t been able to make Leo look like that.

“Dumb,” Leo says when Jason reaches him, and that fondness is really rolling off him in waves. It’s palpable, almost, like Jason might be able to feel it if he touched Leo, the way he used to feel the fire coursing through him. The light is low, coming from the television and the dining room over Leo’s shoulders, and Leo is smiling up at him, and all of a sudden it feels like Jason is holding himself back.

He has no idea where it’s coming from, no idea what he’s holding himself back _from_ , but he’s got that sensation in the back of his mind that he’s going to say or do something he shouldn’t.

Then, Leo says, “You gonna get that?”, and Jason realizes his phone is ringing.

Heat rises inexplicably to Jason’s face, and he acts like he can’t tell Leo is laughing at him as he checks the caller. Tristan McLean.

“Oh, I should get this,” Jason says, before pressing the phone to his ear and stepping back from Leo. “Hello?”

Leo gives him another smile before he turns away and sits down at the table with their guests.

“Hey, Jay,” says a familiar, deep voice. “Just got your text.”

“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to bug you.”

“It’s no bother,” says Tristan. He sounds genuine, but he’s also a professional actor, so Jason still feels somewhat chided. “It’s also a good thing you did text me, because Piper ain’t here.”

“Oh, did she go out?”

There’s a beat of silence before Tristan responds. “No, Jay, you’re not understanding me. What I mean is Piper hasn’t been to the house since you both came for Christmas the other year. Did she tell you she was here?”

Jason doesn’t experience real fear very often anymore. Contrary to what the Greek campers believed, most monsters didn’t bother you when you were older. Only very stupid creatures with no survival instinct would attack a seasoned demigod, especially one as renowned as the Prophecy’s Seven. So he and his friends have been relatively danger-free the past couple of years.

When he hears Tristan say that, though, his heart rate skyrockets.

“Piper hasn’t been there at all?” he asks, and he hears the chatter in the dining room die down.

“No, bud, I’m sorry.”

Jason swallows around a lump in his throat, trying not to panic. “Okay. Have you heard from her? She’s supposed to be in LA.”

“Yeah, she called me after her benefit last week,” says Tristan. “She wanted to know if I had an address for this recording studio that she had an appointment at, but I’d never heard of it before.”

Jason walks into the dining room, so that the other guys can hear the conversation more clearly. All three of them are frowning, but Nico isn’t letting the vibe of the room stop him from eating garlic bread. “Piper was looking for a recording studio?” he repeats for their benefit. _That_ makes Nico put the bread down.

“Which studio?” Nico asks, looking like he already knows the answer. Jason repeats the question to Tristan.

“Oh, I have it in my maps history, I couldn’t even find it,” Tristan says, and a couple of seconds later he adds, “Okay, got it. DOA Studios. That mean anything to you?”

“No, DOA Studios doesn’t mean anything to me,” Jason admits.

“For _fuck’s_ sake.” Nico scowls and stands up. “That’s the entrance to the gods-damned Underworld.”

“Thanks anyway, Tristan,” Jason says before hanging up. He doesn’t want to worry him too much, not until he knows what’s going on.

“Why’s she in the Underworld?” Leo asks, bewildered.

“She owes my dad a favour for his help getting you back,” Nico says, looking about as angry and worried as Jason feels. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll go get her.”

“Not without us, you’re not,” says Leo. He doesn’t stand up, he just starts serving himself some pasta and bread. Despite this being about him, he doesn’t look anything but disappointed. “Ten more minutes won’t kill her. I worked hard on this lasagna.”


	4. PIPER IV: we have not touched the stars

Piper rubs her temples. She’s getting a headache - a migraine, actually, but she’s not allowed to get up and leave. Ten more minutes in this room will surely kill her.

“You always take me for granted!”

“I do not. That sounds like your mother talking, dear.”

“Don’t you start on my mother!”

“Persephone,” Piper interjects, wondering exactly how this became her life. The Queen of the Underworld turns to look at her, wreath of flowers across her temples slightly askew. “How long have you felt taken for granted?”

“Hundreds of years,” says Persephone. She folds her arms tightly across her chest and gives her husband a sidelong glare.

Persephone hadn’t appreciated being called here in the middle of summer, but Piper had wanted to get her favour to Hades over and done with as soon as possible. She’d had no idea what to expect when she charmed her way into the Underworld without dying - maybe a quest or something else that might get her killed - but instead, she’d been instructed to mediate his marriage counselling.

“Okay, so clear something up for me.” Piper leans forward in her chair, curiosity getting the better of her. “Myths are changed so much, since nobody can agree on any single part of one, right, and you’ve relied on a handful of mortal men to tell your stories, but I think one of the most contentious is - well, how you got together.”

Persephone nods, completely ignoring Hades’ quiet scoff. “Well, it is true that I was taken here against my will, but he was a perfect gentleman. I chose to stay, I loved having a space away from my mother.”

“I know what that’s like,” says Piper. She keeps the charm in her voice soft and soothing, trying to diffuse the situation rather than push her own agenda. “My mother can be overbearing, too. So you chose to stay here for half of every year to be with him? It sounds like you really fell for him.”

The fury in Persephone’s face softens ever so slightly, and Piper bites back a triumphant noise. Finally, they’re getting somewhere.

“You know what, that’s exactly right,” she tells Piper. “I did fall in love with him.”

“So why don’t you tell us what changed,” Piper suggests, shifting in her seat. She allows herself to zone out while Persephone talks, because this part is for Hades’ ears. If he doesn’t know how to fix things after hearing exactly what his wife’s issues are, Piper has no hope for him. It’s nice that the argument has paused, because when Piper first got here a couple of days ago, they were shouting over each other for hours on end.

A little charmspeak, some careful words, and she has them talking to each other productively. She supposes that Hades saw this potential in her when she was speaking on Olympus, or when talking to him at the café, but she definitely never wants to do this again. Marriage counselling for the gods is _not_ her dream job.

Persephone cuts herself off, and Piper tunes back in to the conversation. She’s about to tell Persephone to keep going, they’ve finally made a breakthrough, but then she realizes they aren’t alone anymore.

“Alecto,” Hades says coolly. “I told you I was not to be disturbed.”

Alecto - who, it must be noted, is the scariest thing Piper has seen in a damn minute - inclines her head. “Yes, sir. But your son has arrived with a pack of mortals in tow.”

“Oh, for the love of -” Hades mutters, waving off whatever curse he was going to use. Piper is a little disappointed. She’s curious about what a god would finish that sentence with. “Fine. Send him in, but leave his minions in the hallway.”

Alecto vanishes and comes back with Nico, who looks exhausted and angry.

“Piper,” he says with a deep scowl. “You’re done here.”

“No, she is not,” says Hades.

“Oh, stuff it, both of you.” Persephone rolls her eyes and reaches out to pat the back of Piper’s hand in a friendly gesture. “Piper, dear, what would you like to do?”

Well, that seems like a trap, but whatever. “I want to go home. I’m not a couples therapist, I’m just good with my words.”

Persephone nods sympathetically. “I agree, you are. You got my husband and I talking again without shouting, which wasn’t an easy feat, and it’s really all we can expect from you. I do think that we can take it from here. Right, darling?”

“Dear,” Hades says in the careful tone of a man who doesn’t want to outright disagree with his wife after she just finished yelling, “I think that having charmspeak to calm us down is extremely helpful.”

“Can we do, like, a Skype call next time?” Piper asks, fully aware of how ridiculous this situation is.

There’s a moment where Hades and Persephone just look at each other, communicating something silently that Piper, Nico, and Alecto aren’t privy to. Then, Hades nods. A faint smile is playing around his lips as he reaches out to fix Persephone’s wreath of flowers. “I do believe a long distance option will be sufficient. I do not want frozen crops and an angry mother-in-law, so it is best that you go back to the surface, my love.”

The smile that Persephone gives in response makes Piper feel like she’s intruding, suddenly, and she reaches for her duffel bag beside her chair so she doesn’t have to look.

\--

It’s even harder to look at Leo. He’s so clearly disappointed in her, and she’s used to that from Jason and Nico, sure, but something about the way Leo gives her this very tired sort of half smile makes her feel like shit. Will and Jason are muttering to each other, purposefully giving them some space.

“Hey, Beauty Queen,” he says. “You gonna come home with us now or are you planning on running away again?”

The guilt she feels whenever she looks at Leo, alive and _here,_ is intensified by that question. He thinks she’s running away from him. Is she? She could have waited to see Hades at any time, really, she just didn’t like the idea of being in debt to the god of the Underworld, but. If she’s honest, it was a daunting prospect to go back to the brownstone with the sources of her biggest regrets while she was still processing Leo being back.

“No, I’m coming home,” she says, her voice small. She tucks her hair behind her ear. Even though her tattoo is long since healed, she feels a tingle when her fingers brush over it. Leo gives her that sad little smile again. For a long couple of moments, she and Leo are just looking at each other, both hurting from what they see on the other’s face.

Nico, of all people, is the one to break the quiet. “We should leave before Alecto decides you guys are sinners and tortures you.”

“Not sure who or what Alecto is,” Leo says loftily, putting his hands in his pockets, “but she wouldn’t be the first to decide that about me.”

“Alright, Nico, take us home,” Jason sighs and holds his hand out. Nico stares at him blankly.

“Excuse me? I’m not bringing anyone home. I’m tired, I’ve had to spend _way_ more time with my father than I want to, and half of you have pissed me off. I’m not doing you another fucking favour, you can fly home.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then - “Can you bring _me_ home, angelface?”

Nico’s lips twitch. “Yes, but you’re on thin fucking ice. I’ll get the rest of you dickheads back up to the city so you don’t wander into the Fields of Punishment, but you’re on your own from there.”

“Wait, seriously?” Piper asks, incredulous. “You’re just going to leave us stranded in downtown L.A.?”

The look Nico gives her is so irritated and unsympathetic that Piper almost regrets asking. “Strand you? In your hometown? With your phones? And a savings account that could pay off Will’s student loans twice over? After what you did, Piper, you’d deserve worse.”

“I don’t need help with my student loans, though. Just so you know.”

“Will, hon, I am _this_ close.”

Will mimes zipping his lips. For a second, Nico looks on the verge of smiling. Will has always made him softer, smoothed out his rough edges, but Piper doesn’t think Will is even going to try and convince Nico to shadow them home, too. Which is fair enough - they all know better than to poke an angry bear. She sighs and holds her hands out for the boys to take.

“Okay, take us up,” she says. It feels like she hasn’t slept in a month, and she’s ready to leave. Nico nods and everyone joins hands.

Shadow travel is disorienting, especially when going from the depths of the Underworld to a sunny Los Angeles sidewalk. Will’s hand leaves hers, and by the time Piper blinks the afternoon glare of the sun out of her eyes, he and Nico are both gone.

“Well, bye, I guess,” she says to the air.

“I can’t believe they actually left us here,” says Jason, looking around as if he expects them to have just been distracted by a storefront or something. All that’s around are distracted shoppers and some loud tourists.

“I can,” Leo snorts. “Like, di Angelo doesn’t seem the type to make empty threats.”

“I didn’t even do anything to make him mad!”

“Oh, please, there’s no way to be sure of that. Remember when he threw an orange at my head on the Argo II? That was completely unprovoked.”

“You called him Danny Phantom.”

“And was I wrong?”

“Boys,” Piper interrupts, smiling despite the ache in her chest. “We need to get to the airport.”

Leo’s own smile fades, and Piper is nervous that he’s angry with her until he says, “I know you can talk me onto the plane even though I’m legally dead, but I’d, uh, rather not ever tempt Zeus into smiting me again.”

“You don’t have a great track record in the air,” Piper agrees. As soon as she’s said it, she wishes she hadn’t, because she sees it again, the image of Leo smiling as flames overtook his whole body right before he exploded. She’s stunned for a moment, trying to catch her breath as if she’s falling from the air once more.

Jason knows her well. He touches her arm lightly. “Hey, he’s right here. C’mon, why don’t we go see your dad for a bit and start the drive home tomorrow?”

“Okay, yeah,” says Piper. She and her dad have a strained but loving relationship, since there are things about her life that she can never tell him and there are things about his life that she will never understand. “Let’s get an Uber.”

Jason takes care of that while Piper texts her dad and gives him a heads up on their arrival. By the time he responds with a row of smiley emojis, a black Toyota has pulled up to the curb in front of them. 

“You wanna sit in the front and interrogate the driver on their engine?” Jason jokes, and Leo laughs.

“Nah, I’ll sit with you.”

So they all clamber into the back of the car like it’s a taxi. The driver doesn’t seem to give a shit. She checks that Jason is the one who ordered her and double-checks the address, but then she just turns up the music and rolls the windows down for the coastal drive.

Leo’s leg is warm against Piper’s. Not unnaturally so, not the way he used to be, but still warm. He’s intrigued by the EDM, keeps asking Jason and Piper about it, but neither of them really listen to this style of music so most of his questions are met with a shrug. At some point, Jason gives Leo his phone to entertain him like he’s a toddler. It works. Leo is helpfully entertained for the rest of the drive to Malibu as he fiddles around with it.

Her dad’s house isn’t far in terms of distance, but trying to leave the city in late afternoon has them practically gridlocked. Piper tentatively leans against Leo and watches him play puzzle games. Jason does the same on his other side. Leo laughs, softly, but keeps making his way through Jason’s various apps without comment. 

The sun is setting when they finally branch off from the traffic, and it’s stunning to watch it glisten over the water to their right. It’s beautiful here, always has been, but Piper could never live here again. Her life has been tied to New York since the day she landed at camp. Sure, she might not see a sunset like this in Brooklyn, but she can live without them. She turns to Leo, who is gazing out the window with an unreadable expression. That wave of guilt still crashes over her and it feels like it could drown her if she let it.

Leo smiles when he meets Piper’s eyes. Jason has his head on Leo’s shoulder, breathing deeply. He might have dozed off.

After a moment’s hesitation, Piper smiles back. It’s going to take a lot of fighting to keep her head above the water of grief and guilt that have been building in her for _ten years_ of her life, but that is work she is willing to put in. For Leo.

She looks back out the window and watches the sun get slowly swallowed by the ocean.

\--

The houses that Piper lived in during her childhood were always somewhat excessive for just two people. It made her uncomfortable to come home sometimes, to get dropped off by her bus at a gated community and have a dozen or so rooms to do her homework in while she waited for her dad to come home. She’s so glad that her dad downsized after he stopped doing blockbusters. He’s ostensibly retired, citing a back injury for no longer doing huge action movies, but he still guests on a ton of shows and has done a handful of Oscar-bait over the years. Mostly he orbits in smaller roles now, but he hasn’t stopped being a household name.

Tristan McLean’s new Malibu home is a private waterfront bungalow in, yes, a gated community, but it’s two bedrooms and half the size of Piper’s brownstone. He seems comfortable here in a way Piper has never seen him before. He goes surfing, smiles more in photos, and has even started cooking for himself again.

Still, Leo wolf-whistles lowly as they pull up to the house’s gate, and the driver doesn’t seem surprised to receive a handful of bills as a tip. She just waves them off and thanks them for a peaceful scenic drive.

Jason holds Piper’s bag for her while she searches for her keys. She never comes here, has only been here twice in the four years since her dad moved in, but he wanted to make sure she could come if she wanted to. She taps the sensor with the small card she hole-punched and attached to her keyring. It beeps quietly and the gate door slowly splits down the middle.

“Oh, cool,” Leo breathes, looking a bit too much like he wants to take the control panel apart to see how it all works. Piper rolls her eyes and tugs him into the yard by his bony elbow. The gate closes behind them, which - despite how welcoming the beach house is - feels ominous.

Piper knocks, because it feels weird to just let herself in the front door. They aren’t kept waiting for long - her dad greets them with his typical warm smile and sad eyes before Leo can even start to fidget.

“Hey there, Pipes,” he says, pulling her in for a hug. “Jay. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Leo,” says Jason. Leo gives an awkward little wave. “He’s our best friend.”

“Yes, yes, I think I’ve heard your name mentioned, Leo,” her dad says, shaking Leo’s hand. It’s no surprise he doesn’t remember that Leo is the friend who died, but Piper is grateful for small mercies. Maneuvering that explanation would have been a challenge that she is just not up to today.

“We decided to road trip home,” Piper lies smoothly. “The boys came looking for me after you called - I was just at Drew’s! Little bit of miscommunication.”

“I like Drew,” Tristan says absently, gesturing for them to follow him inside. “Tell her I’m looking for someone to dress me in August. I have a premiere that I couldn’t get out of.”

“She’d love that,” Piper says, smiling. “Have you got room for us to crash tonight? I don’t want to be a bother.”

“I can make up the couch for Leo if you like.”

“No, that’s fine,” Jason interjects before Piper can say anything. “The guest bed’s a king, we can share. We used to camp together all the time, so this will be like luxury camping. Like, glamping.”

Leo looks relieved that he won’t have to be alone in an unfamiliar place and sways closer to Jason almost subconsciously. Piper sees her dad’s eyebrows raise a fraction, but he doesn’t say anything more about it.

“Are you all hungry?” he asks instead, clapping his hands together. “I was just going to Postmate some burritos or something.”

“You’re going to get burritos delivered?” Leo asks, aghast. “No offense, but you might as well just get Taco Bell if you’re not going to make them yourself. Mr McLean, do you have tortillas here?”

“I do.” Tristan looks almost sheepish, and Piper has to hide a smile. “It just never comes out right when I do it.”

“Dad’s new to cooking,” says Piper.

“Why don’t you show him?” Jason suggests, his fingers brushing Leo’s arm in a way that almost makes Piper shiver from a phantom static zap. “He’ll complain the whole time if he has to eat Mexican he didn’t make himself, Tristan.”

“Hey,” says Leo, but the protest is half-hearted.

Jason smiles fondly at him. “I’m sure you can give him the rundown. I need to take a shower - Tristan, can Leo and I borrow some pajamas? The airline lost our luggage.”

He’s almost as good of a liar as Piper is. She doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“Sure, I’ll put some in the guest room for you,” he agrees easily. “Feel free to use the laundry as well. Pipes, why don’t you show your friend where things are in the kitchen and I’ll meet you in there?”

Not like Piper knows where anything is here, but whatever, she knows how to open cupboards. What catches her attention more is his tone of voice - Piper is extremely good at reading people, even experienced actors like her father, and the slight hesitation before he says ‘friend’ makes her want to blush.

She’s going to laugh it off, tell him he has the wrong idea before he goes ahead and puts up a stocking at Christmas for Leo, but she can’t. It feels a bit too much like a lie.

Gods. Piper doesn’t want to think about that right now. It’s easy to forget about while she watches Leo teach her father how to cook - and some Spanish while he’s at it, because how can you live in California for almost thirty years and not know the very basics? - and while they sit around to watch Jeopardy and eat. Jason joins them by then, and he keeps looking at Leo and smiling like he still can’t believe it. She manages to push the thoughts aside completely until she is face to face with the reality of a king bed and two guys to share it with. 

The three of them stand in the quiet room for a long moment, Leo in a pair of Piper’s sweats and Jason in her father’s, and then Leo laughs the silence off and clambers onto the left side of the bed. That leaves Jason and Piper to make a decision. They exchange a look, and Piper can’t tell if Jason is having the same issue as she is or if he feels awkward in general, but either way he seems just as hesitant.

“Oh, do y’all want me to sleep in the middle?” Leo asks after another beat of silence. He’s already scooching over. “I forgot you broke up, to be honest. Might be pretty weird for you, right?”

So Jason told him about that. Well, he must have left out the part about how they still share a bed more often than not, but she jumps on the excuse.

“Thanks,” she says, taking Leo’s vacated spot. “You don’t mind?”

“Nah, I’m all good. As long as nobody does karate in their sleep, I think we’ll be fine.”

Jason turns off the main light and joins them under the covers. The bedside lamps are still on, giving the whole room a warmer glow. It feels - intimate. Not in a romantic way, not exactly, but in the way a movie is lit if something soft and emotional is about to happen. Piper turns hers off, but that only makes things worse.

The light from Jason’s side makes the features of their faces duller in shadow, but Piper can still see the sharp angles of Leo’s jaw, Jason’s rounded nose, the way they give each other a little grin when their feet accidentally knock together under the blanket. They’re beautiful in a way that Piper’s mom could never have created, each scar and oddity telling a different story about her boys. They’re beautiful and they’re hers. She shouldn’t have stayed away for so long.

Leo tries a couple of times to get comfortable and then sighs, pulling his arms into his shirt sleeves and readjusting whatever he’s wearing under it.

“You’re not supposed to sleep in a binder,” Piper reminds him, looking at her phone so he doesn’t feel like he’s under scrutiny.

“I know, _mom_ ,” Leo says with a roll of his dark eyes. “I don’t have one anymore, it’s just a sports bra.”

“Well, you shouldn’t sleep in that, either.” Piper keeps her tone mild, because the last thing Leo needs is her worrying loudly about him. She does wonder if Leo has really lucky genetics or if something else happened on Olympus to stop his chest or hips developing further, but it would be rude to ask. “And you should have said something, I’ll order you a few.”

“Sure,” Leo agrees, wiggling like a worm before he pulls the bra down over his legs and tosses it in the direction of Piper’s bag. “Thanks, this isn’t even very comfortable. I found it at the thrift store.”

“You’re wearing a secondhand sports bra instead of a binder? Jason, did you know this?”

“No,” Jason tells the ceiling. “I don’t make a habit of asking what kind of underwear my friends are wearing on any given day. What’s the difference, anyway?”

Piper reaches over Leo to smack him lightly. “One is designed for women and one is designed for men, dumbass.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

A short, loud laugh interrupts Piper’s rebuttal, and Leo grins at them.

“I missed you guys,” he says. It trips off his tongue so easily that Piper is surprised - Leo has never exactly been the most forthright with his feelings. She curls closer but doesn’t quite touch him in case he’s stopped being such a snuggler, and Jason gives them both a soft smile before he reaches for his lamp and sends the room into darkness.

\--

Tristan, in true rich dad form, offers them a car he isn’t using so they don’t have to get a rental. Jason and Leo both look like they want to protest, but Piper’s fine with the loan. It’s not like her dad needs four cars, and they don’t own one. To be fair, they also don’t really _need_ one in Brooklyn, but Jason confides that Leo has been getting claustrophobic on public transit, so. Why not? If Leo would rather sit in traffic than jump on the metro, that’s his prerogative. 

They head out right after a big breakfast, wanting to make the most of the daylight, and Tristan gives all of them tight hugs before he waves them off. Leo looks surprised by the contact, but it doesn’t seem unwelcome. 

Jason dozes in the roomy backseat while Leo presses every button on the dashboard to see what they all do. Piper’s music is playing at a low volume, but otherwise the first hour or so of the drive is quiet. She keeps expecting Leo to break it but he doesn’t, engrossed as he is in a game on Piper’s phone, and she figures it’s up to her. 

“We need to get you a phone of your own,” says Piper, fighting to keep her voice casual. She keeps looking at the road so she doesn’t have to feel the guilt that comes from no longer seeing the change in Leo’s eyes.

They’re still the same colour. His eyes are still deep and dark and twinkling with humour and intelligence. The thing is that they used to crackle like there was a literal bonfire right behind them. If she had just figured it out sooner, if Zeus had only had him for a month, two, then maybe Piper could have convinced them to just let Leo go. The other gods wouldn’t have had all that time to take sides and get angrier. She might have even gotten away with telling Zeus he was overreacting.

Except, she gave up on Leo a very long time ago, and those embers are gone because of her.

While she’s lost in the weight of her own feelings, Leo has started talking. Piper shakes her head to try and clear it as she tunes back in to the present.

“- don’t think I know enough to pick it out myself yet, I know I like Jason’s better than yours but I don’t really know the difference between them aside from the brand? I just know his feels better in my hand.” Leo pauses. Snorts. “That is _absolutely_ what she said.”

Piper is startled into laughing. She still doesn’t look over, but she imagines that Leo has the same self-satisfied smirk on his lips that he’s always had when he made one of them laugh.

“You’re such a boy,” she says, fondness flowing from her voice.

“Yep,” Leo agrees cheerfully. “Anyway, can I even get a phone? I’m legally dead, aren’t I?”

Piper winces. “Kinda. You already had a missing person’s report from when we ditched Wilderness School, and - I filed more paperwork a few years ago as well. _Technically_ , you’re missing and presumed dead.”

“Oh, just like reality, then.”

“Stop that. I already feel like shit about it.”

Sighing, Leo puts his hand on Piper’s knee and squeezes. “I’m not trying to make you feel worse, Beauty Queen. In fact I’d prefer you stopped feeling like shit altogether - I don’t like seeing you so sad. And guilty. It’s not a good look. Gives you wrinkles, makes you ugly, turns you white.”

She laughs again. It feels so nice to ease the knot in her chest and laugh like only Leo has ever managed to get her to do. “I’ll try to get over it.”

“See that you do.”

“So, we’ll just come up with a story about where you were. It’s gotta be good, because - well. The cops won’t exactly be helpful, will they, not when you’re a brown queer delinquent who’s been missing for years.”

“Let’s say I joined a cult accidentally,” jokes Leo, “and that I spent the time trying to take it down from the inside.”

They trade more and more ridiculous plots back and forth, Jason joining them when he finally wakes up, and it gets easier. Easier to laugh, easier to breathe, easier to glance over at Leo during long traffic lights. She knows she’s still got a long, long way to go before she’ll feel anywhere close to okay again, but it’s a start. 

\--

All they want is to get home, so they take the Northern route home without stopping for longer than an hour or three at a time. They stretch their legs, make fun of Jason when he takes a piss on the side of a dark highway, take time to look at the stars. It’s nice to just drive until they can’t anymore and switch off control, napping in the backseat and rock-paper-scissoring to see who gets the gas and food when they need it.

Leo doesn’t have an innate magical sense for machines anymore and hasn’t driven anything in years, so Jason teaches him through the cornfields and backroads of the Midwest. There’s a lot of laughter as he tries to remember where things are, and Piper is prepared to talk their way out of any tickets, but he’s still a quick learner even without the technomagic. It’s comforting to listen to her boys, and Piper gets the added bonus of sleeping away most of the boring states while they bicker. She has a lot of sleep to catch up on; it feels like she hasn’t gotten a good night’s rest since before she started dreaming of Leo.

He’s here now, though, cracking jokes in the driver’s seat while Jason mildly corrects his speed or his tendency to drift left when he isn’t paying attention. The radio is on, volume low, and Piper feels so at peace here.

Although her turn to drive has long since come and gone, Jason keeps telling her to get more rest. Leo is comfortable now in any case, tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel in a way that makes Piper’s eyes even heavier. It takes Piper coming in and out of consciousness a few times, their second day on the road, before she realises that he isn’t tapping randomly or to the beat of the music. He’s spelling something out.

Piper doesn’t know Morse Code, but she knows the three letters she has inked. She can’t make out the full sentence with just that knowledge. All she knows is that Leo keeps tapping the same eight letters over and over again, and one of the words is L-O-something-E. It doesn’t take an Annabeth to work out what he’s saying.

That does make it slightly harder to sleep.

Luckily, Piper doesn’t need to drive again until they hit Philly. Leo is having too much fun behind the wheel to give it up for longer than a cat nap or a bathroom break, and Jason is always happy to take over. At least she feels _rested_ for the first time in weeks.

“I don’t think our driving to sleeping ratio was evenly distributed at all,” she comments as she adjusts the mirrors and seat.

“I like driving,” says Leo. He shrugs and puts his feet up on the console between Piper and Jason. None of them have bothered changing their clothes since Malibu, and Piper feels her nose wrinkle. 

“Valdez, don’t take your shoes off, it’s going to reek like foot til we get home.”

“I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”

“I’m not! They’re right beside me! Jay, do something.”

The smile that Jason gives her is one that Piper hasn’t seen in years. “Just roll the window down, it’s a nice day. You don’t exactly smell like roses either, babe.”

It’s a mistake, the endearment, and everyone in the car knows it, but Leo has always been great about stopping awkward silences before they start. “He’s right, sweetheart,” Leo chimes in, but he takes his feet down and stretches out in the back anyway. 

_Sweetheart_ falls out of Leo’s mouth so easily, the same cadence he says _Superman_ or _Beauty Queen_ , just on the edge of teasing and fond. The atmosphere stays relaxed even with Jason’s slip of the tongue, because Leo has a way of making it seem like this is just something the three of them do and there’s no reason to make it weird. Piper is so grateful. She and Jason have been hurting each other for far too long without Leo around to soften the accidental blows. The relief in Jason’s shoulders is almost palpable, too, and it’s like Leo knows exactly what they need to hear in order to function like friends and not sad, bitter exes.

She gives Leo a warm smile in the rearview. He winks.

The rest of the drive is quiet. It’s the middle of the night, traffic is easy, there’s no weird energy in the car, and Piper gets from Philly to Brooklyn in the time it takes Leo to beat thirty levels of Candy Crush. She parks in front of their brownstone in the spot that she pays for and never uses.

Once they pile out onto the sidewalk, Piper stretches her limbs and back out until she hears some satisfying pops. Jason makes a face, but she’s probably less achey than he is, now. She follows him up their brick steps, her legs protesting the small amount of exercise after days of mostly just sitting in a car. It feels amazing to kick her flats off and close the door behind her at last. The cool hardwood on the soles of her feet is such a welcome change.

“Dibs on the good shower,” she yawns, flicking on the hall light. Jason is sitting on a step and fighting with his shoelaces, which makes her smile. He’s… cute. She ought to feel some kind of heartache, noticing it, but she doesn’t. She’s too exhausted, too happy.

“Fine,” he sighs. “Leo, you can use the shower on the second floor. I’ll probably still be here by the time one of you is out.”

Leo laughs, but it’s quiet. He looks distracted. Piper realises that he hasn’t said anything since he called her sweetheart, but that could just be a coincidence. He’s halfway up the flight of stairs before he turns around. “Wait. This place has seven bathrooms and you’re telling me that only two of us can shower at a time?”

“Well, there’s four showers,” says Piper. “The others are half-baths. But the basement shower flooded last time Annabeth used it, and the water pressure in my ensuite sucks.”

“It’s an old building,” Jason says with a little shrug. “Not much the plumbers have been able to do.”

“I can take a look at the pipes,” Leo offers. He’s weirdly jittery, like he’s downed a venti coffee without either of them noticing, and he’s got a very familiar glint in his eye. Piper remembers seeing it many times in the months that Leo was building the Argo II and nearly running himself into the ground with it. There’s something bothering him, she can tell, but she has no idea how to breach the topic when they’re all so tired.

“Don’t worry about it tonight,” says Jason. The little scar on his lip twitches; he’s worried, too.

Thankfully, Leo just nods and keeps heading up to the second floor. Piper lingers, watching the space he disappears from while Jason works on an especially stubborn knot with a deep frown.

“He’s still Leo,” she says softly.

“Yeah.”

“He’s probably just burned out from so much interaction. Especially after - well. You know. I bet he got used to being… alone.”

“That makes sense. He seemed fine an hour ago, though.”

“Don’t stress,” says Piper. She infuses her voice with calmness so that Jason doesn’t hurt himself overthinking things. “We’re all home, now. I’m sorry I wasn’t here before, but. I’m here now. _Leo_ is here, now. You gotta let him have a little alone time.”

“Okay.” Jason gives her a tired, genuine smile. “I’ll meet you upstairs in a bit.”

Piper smiles back and runs a comforting hand over his hair on her way past him. It’s getting too-long again, shaggy and soft, and she just wants to keep petting him. She has to force herself up the stairs, but she’s glad that she didn’t lean into the vulnerability once she’s under the shower spray - this is _much_ better than anything that could have stemmed from her and Jason being touchy-feely after an emotional rollercoaster of a week.

She moans out loud when the water hits her back in the exact spot that the car’s seats pressed into the wrong way, and she lets her mind drift away from Jason to get herself cleaned up. She doesn’t bother with anything time-intensive like conditioning her hair or shaving, mostly just getting the knots and grease out of her hair and dousing herself in enough of Jason’s body wash to smell like him for days. She’s got no idea how long she’s in there for, but only Jason is waiting in his bedroom for her. 

“Leo not done yet?” she asks, tying her hair off in a long plait before searching Jason’s drawers for a sleep shirt. She pauses when he doesn’t answer her and looks around at him. “What are you doing?”

Jason is cross-legged on the floor, where he’s surrounded by small moleskins and scraps of paper with scribbles and doodles all over them. There’s an empty Nike shoebox beside him.

“Leo’s watching a movie or something,” he says distractedly.

“Are you Beautiful Mind-ing your next book?”

That makes him look up. There’s a long moment where he doesn’t speak, but Piper feels like she hears him anyway. He isn’t sure whether or not he wants to tell her what the pages are, which makes her morbidly curious, and then he’s trying to think of the best lie to tell her once he decides on keeping it to himself. She is freaky good at reading people, but she wouldn’t even need Aphrodite’s powers to know what Jason is thinking at any given moment. She knows him too well. She loves him too much.

And she, for one, is too tired to deal with whatever he’s doing and all the soft feelings in her own chest, so she just waves off whatever he’s going to say with a smile.

“I’ll go join him. Make sure you take a break to shower, Jay, and get some rest.”

“I’ll try,” he says quietly. He looks back down at the page in his hand when she drops her towel and pulls on one of his shirts. It’s mostly a courtesy - her body has not been a secret to him for a very long time - but it’s one she appreciates anyway.

Piper glances at the papers again on her way out, but she can’t read anything from here. She leaves Jason to whatever was so pressing in that shoebox.


End file.
